the St. Mark of the Salute, and than this it is very much less Giorgionesque.  To praise the Cristo della Moneta anew after it has been so incomparably well praised seems almost an impertinence.  The soft radiance of the colour so well matches the tempered majesty, the infinite mansuetude of the conception; the spirituality, which is of the essence of the august subject, is so happily expressed, without any sensible diminution of the splendour of Renaissance art approaching its highest.  And yet nothing could well be simpler than the scheme of colour as compared with the complex harmonies which Venetian art in a somewhat later phase affected.  Frank contrasts are established between the tender, glowing flesh of the Christ, seen in all the glory of achieved manhood, and the coarse, brown skin of the son of the people who appears as the Pharisee; between the bright yet tempered red of His robe and the deep blue of His mantle.  But the golden glow, which is Titian’s own, envelops the contrasting figures and the contrasting hues in its harmonising atmosphere, and gives unity to the whole.[28]

[Illustration:  The “Cristo della Moneta.”  Dresden Gallery.  From a Photograph by Hanfstaengl.]

A small group of early portraits—­all of them somewhat difficult to place—­call for attention before we proceed.  Probably the earliest portrait among those as yet recognised as from the hand of our painter—­leaving out of the question the Baffo and the portrait-figures in the great St. Mark of the Salute—­is the magnificent Ariosto in the Earl of Darnley’s Collection at Cobham Hall.[29] There is very considerable doubt, to say the least, as to whether this half-length really represents the court poet of Ferrara, but the point requires more elaborate discussion than can be here conceded to it.  Thoroughly Giorgionesque is the soberly tinted yet sumptuous picture in its general arrangement, as in its general tone, and in this respect it is the fitting companion and the descendant of Giorgione’s Antonio Broccardo at Buda-Pesth, of his Knight of Malta at the Uffizi.  Its resemblance, moreover, is, as regards the general lines of the composition, a very striking one to the celebrated Sciarra Violin-Player by Sebastiano del Piombo, now in the gallery of Baron Alphonse Rothschild at Paris, where it is as heretofore given to Raphael.[30] The handsome, manly head has lost both subtlety and character through some too severe process of cleaning, but Venetian art has hardly anything more magnificent to show than the costume, with the quilted sleeve of steely, blue-grey satin which occupies so prominent a place in the picture.

[Illustration:  Madonna and Child, with four Saints.  Dresden Gallery.  From a Photograph by Hanfstaengl.]