contained already the _Assunta_ and the _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_, for a
grave in the Cappella del Crocifisso, offering in payment a _Pietà_, and
this offer had been accepted. But some misunderstanding and consequent
quarrel having been the ultimate outcome of the proposed arrangements,
he left his great canvas unfinished, and willed that his body should be
taken to Cadore, and there buried in the chapel of the Vecelli.

[Illustration: _Pietà. By Titian and Palma Giovine. Accademia delle
Belle Arti, Venice. From a Photograph by E. Alinari._]

The well-known inscription on the base of the monumental niche which
occupies the centre of the _Pietà_, "Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit,
Palma reverenter absolvit, Deoque dicavit opus," records how what Titian
had left undone was completed as reverently as might be by Palma
Giovine. At this stage--the question being much complicated by
subsequent restorations--the effort to draw the line accurately between
the work of the master on one hand and that of his able and pious
assistant on the other, would be unprofitable. Let us rather strive to
appreciate what is left of a creation unique in the life-work of Titian,
and in some ways his most sublime invention. Genius alone could have
triumphed over the heterogeneous and fantastic surroundings in which he
has chosen to enframe his great central group. And yet even these--the
great rusticated niche with the gold mosaic of the pelican feeding its
young, the statues of Moses on one side and of the Hellespontic Sibyl on
the other--but serve to heighten the awe of the spectator. The
artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the
cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the
beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, yet another focus of
illumination being the body of the dead Christ. This system of lighting
furnishes just the luminous half-gloom, the deeply significant