before a Prie-Dieu, on which is an open book, and with clasped hands adores the Mother and her Child.  The locality represents a gallery or portico paved with marble, and sustained by pillars in a fantastic Moorish style.  The whole picture is quite exquisite for the delicacy of colour and execution.  In the catalogue of the Louvre, this picture, is entitled “St. Joseph adoring the Infant Christ,”—­an obvious mistake, if we consider the style of the treatment and the customs of the time.

5.  All who have visited the church of the Frari at Venice will remember—­for once seen, they never can forget—­the ex-voto altar-piece which adorns the chapel of the Pesaro family.  The beautiful Virgin is seated on a lofty throne to the right of the picture, and presses to her bosom the Dio Bambinetto, who turns from her to bless the votary presented by St. Peter.  The saint stands on the steps of the throne, one hand on a book; and behind him kneels one of the Pesaro family, who was at once bishop of Paphos and commander of the Pope’s galleys:  he approaches to consecrate to the Madonna the standards taken from the Turks, which are borne by St. George, as patron of Venice.  On the other side appear St. Francis and St. Antony of Padua, as patrons of the church in which the picture is dedicated.  Lower down, kneeling on one side of the throne, is a group of various members of the Pesaro family, three of whom are habited in crimson robes, as Cavalieri di San Marco; the other, a youth about fifteen, looks out of the picture, astonishingly alive, and yet sufficiently idealized to harmonize with the rest.  This picture is very remarkable for several reasons.  It is a piece of family history, curiously illustrative of the manners of the time.  The Pesaro here commemorated was an ecclesiastic, but appointed by Alexander VI. to command the galleys with which he joined the Venetian forces against the Turks in 1503.  It is for this reason that St. Peter—­as representative here of the Roman pontiff—­introduces him to the Madonna, while St. George, as patron of Venice, attends him.  The picture is a monument of the victory gained by Pesaro, and the gratitude and pride of his family.  It is also one of the finest works of Titian; one of the earliest instances in which a really grand religious composition assumes almost a dramatic and scenic form, yet retains a certain dignity and symmetry worthy of its solemn destination.[1]

[Footnote 1:  We find in the catalogue of pictures which belonged to our Charles I. one which represented “a pope preferring a general of his navy to St. Peter.”  It is Pope Alexander VI. presenting this very Pesaro to St. Peter; that is, in plain unpictorial prose, giving him the appointment of admiral of the galleys of the Roman states.  This interesting picture, after many vicissitudes, is now in the Museum at Antwerp. (See the Handbook to the Royal Galleries, p. 201.)]