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An invalid, a half paralyzed man, might be a great poet, a celebrated musician, but to be a Michael Angelo or a Titian a man must have not merely a privileged soul, but a vigorous body.
All the same interesting as the picture undoubtedly is, remarkable in finish, and of undoubtedly Titianesque origin the writer finds it difficult, nay impossible, to accept this Paul III. as a work from the hand of Titian himself.
Nobody can ever speak of a "want of refinement" in Titian, if they thought so before, after seeing these pictures. Then there is the Herodias, the same as the girl in Dresden who holds up the casket, wonderfully delicate and beautiful; and several other portraits and pictures, which I cannot tell you of, even if you are not already tired.
And it is very observable that, in this picture, Titian, the colourist, is most sparing of what we are too fond of calling colour.
"Then I am very sorry you have had the trouble of coming down," said Falloden politely. "Shall I order your carriage?" The great ship-owner stared at him. He was on the point of losing his temper, perhaps of withdrawing from his bargain, when over Falloden's head he caught sight of the Titian and the play of light on its shining armour; of the Van Dyck opposite.
"Doesn't he look as if he might have been painted by Titian?" "Is he really so handsome as that?" "He is a little older and sadder, that is all. When we were married it was exactly like him." For an instant she hesitated and then broke out almost bitterly, "Isn't that a face any woman might fall in love with, a face any woman living or dead would not be willing to give up?"
Stefano at Venice with his sword drawn and his buckler at hand, prepared for the violence of Titian, is a sample of the masters who found it necessary to combine profession of the fine arts with the business of a bravo.
It was fine to come then, and be for a while the guest of Titian. There is evidence that he began after this visit to do what for years he had been learning to do, yet, of course, as is ever the case with the earnest man, doing as a student, as one who feels all truth to be of the infinite. The result has been a series of remarkable pictures.
The picture has, as a portrait by Titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is easy to imagine that Cesare Vecellio may have had a share in it. Singular is the absence of all pose, of all attempt to harmonise the main lines of the design or give pictorial elegance to the naïve directness of the presentment.
We are in our heroic age, still face to face with the shaggy forces of unsubdued Nature, and we have our Theseuses and Perseuses, though they may be named Israel Putnam and Daniel Boone. It is nothing against us that we are a commercial people. Athens was a trading community; Dante and Titian were the growth of great marts, and England was already commercial when she produced Shakespeare.
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