In the next room—­the Sala di Venere, and the last room in the long suite—­we find another Raphael portrait, and another Pope, this time Julius II, that Pontiff whose caprice and pride together rendered null and void and unhappy so many years of Michelangelo’s life, since it was for him that the great Julian tomb, never completed, was designed.  A replica of this picture is in our National Gallery.  Here also are a wistful and poignant John the Baptist by Dossi, No. 380; two Duerers—­an Adam and an Eve, very naked and primitive, facing each other from opposite walls; and two Rubens landscapes not equal to ours at Trafalgar Square, but spacious and lively.  The gem of the room is a lovely Titian, No. 92, on an easel, a golden work of supreme quietude and disguised power.  The portrait is called sometimes the Duke of Norfolk, sometimes the “Young Englishman”.

Returning to the first room—­the Sala of the Iliad—­we enter the Sala dell’ Educazione di Giove, and find on the left a little gipsy portrait by Boccaccio Boccaccino (1497-1518) which has extraordinary charm:  a grave, wistful, childish face in a blue handkerchief:  quite a new kind of picture here.  I reproduce it in this volume, but it wants its colour.  For the rest, the room belongs to less-known and later men, in particular to Cristofano Allori (1577-1621), with his famous Judith, reproduced in all the picture shops of Florence.  This work is no favourite of mine, but one cannot deny it power and richness.  The Guido Reni opposite, in which an affected fat actress poses as Cleopatra with the asp, is not, however, even tolerable.

We next pass, after a glance perhaps at the adjoining tapestry room on the left (where the bronze Cain and Abel are), the most elegant bathroom imaginable, fit for anything rather than soap and splashes, and come to the Sala di Ulisse and some good Venetian portraits:  a bearded senator in a sable robe by Paolo Veronese, No. 216, and, No. 201, Titian’s fine portrait of the ill-fated Ippolito de’ Medici, son of that Giuliano de’ Medici, Duc de Nemours, whose tomb by Michelangelo is at S. Lorenzo.  This amiable young man was brought up by Leo X until the age of twelve, when the Pope died, and the boy was sent to Florence to live at the Medici palace, with the base-born Alessandro, under the care of Cardinal Passerini, where he remained until Clarice de’ Strozzi ordered both the boys to quit.  In 1527 came the third expulsion of the Medici from Florence, and Ippolito wandered about until Clement VII, the second Medici Pope, was in Rome, after the sack, and, joining him there, he was, against his will, made a cardinal, and sent to Hungary:  Clement’s idea being to establish Alessandro (his natural son) as Duke of Florence, and squeeze Ippolito, the rightful heir, out.  This, Clement succeeded in doing, and the repulsive and squalid-minded Alessandro—­known as the Mule—­was installed.  Ippolito, in whom this proceeding caused deep grief, settled