The famous Christ bearing the Cross in the Chiesa di S. Rocco at Venice is first, in his Life of the Castelfranco painter, ascribed by Vasari to Giorgione, and then in the subsequent Life of Titian given to that master, but to a period very much too late in his career.  The biographer quaintly adds:  “This figure, which many have believed to be from the hand of Giorgione, is to-day the most revered object in Venice, and has received more charitable offerings in money than Titian and Giorgione together ever gained in the whole course of their life.”  This too great popularity of the work as a wonder-working picture is perhaps the cause that it is to-day in a state as unsatisfactory as is the Man of Sorrows in the adjacent Scuola.  The picture which presents “Christ dragged along by the executioner, with two spectators in the background,” resembles most among Giorgione’s authentic creations the Christ bearing the Cross in the Casa Loschi at Vicenza.  The resemblance is not, however, one of colour and technique, since this last—­one of the earliest of Giorgiones—­still recalls Giovanni Bellini, and perhaps even more strongly Cima; it is one of type and conception.  In both renderings of the divine countenance there is—­or it may be the writer fancies that there is—­underlying that expression of serenity and humiliation accepted which is proper to the subject, a sinister, disquieting look, almost a threat.  Crowe and Cavalcaselle have called attention to a certain disproportion in the size of the head, as compared with that of the surrounding actors in the scene.  A similar disproportion is to be observed in another early Titian, the Christ between St. Andrew and St. Catherine in the Church of SS.  Ermagora and Fortunato (commonly called S. Marcuola) at Venice.  Here the head of the infant Christ, who stands on a pedestal holding the Orb, between the two saints above mentioned, is strangely out of proportion to the rest.  Crowe and Cavalcaselle had refused to accept this picture as a genuine Titian (vol. ii. p. 432), but Morelli restored it to its rightful place among the early works.

Next to these paintings, and certainly several years before the Three Ages and the Sacred and Profane Love, the writer is inclined to place the Bishop of Paphos (Baffo) recommended by Alexander VI. to St. Peter, once in the collection of Charles I.[11] and now in the Antwerp Gallery.  The main elements of Titian’s art may be seen here, in imperfect fusion, as in very few even of his early productions.  The not very dignified St. Peter, enthroned on a kind of pedestal adorned with a high relief of classic design, of the type which we shall find again in the Sacred and Profane Love, recalls Giovanni Bellini, or rather his immediate followers; the magnificently robed Alexander VI. (Rodrigo Borgia), wearing the triple tiara, gives back the style in portraiture of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio; while the kneeling Jacopo Pesaro—­an ecclesiastic