vacant on the death of Giovanni Bellini; and this new offer, which stipulates for certain special payments and provisions, is accepted by the Council.  Titian, like most other holders of the much-coveted office, shows himself subsequently much more eager to receive its not inconsiderable emoluments than to finish the pictures, the painting of which is the one essential duty attached to the office.  Some further bargaining takes place with the Council on the 18th of January 1516, but, a few days after the death of Giovanni Bellini at the end of November in the same year, fresh resolutions are passed postponing the grant to Titian of Bellini’s patent; notwithstanding which, there is conclusive evidence of a later date to show that he is allowed the full enjoyment of his “Senseria in Fontego di Tedeschi” (sic), with all its privileges and immunities, before the close of this same year, 1516.

[Illustration:  Portrait of a Man.  Alte Pinakothek, Munich.  From a Photograph by Hanfstaengl.]

It is in this year that Titian paid his first visit to Ferrara, and entered into relations with Alfonso I., which were to become more intimate as the position of the master became greater and more universally recognised in Italy.  It was here, as we may safely assume, that he completed, or, it may be, repaired, Giovanni Bellini’s last picture, the great Bacchanal or Feast of the Gods on Earth, now at Alnwick Castle.  It is there that he obtained the commission for two famous works, the Worship of Venus and the Bacchanal, designed, in continuation of the series commenced with Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, to adorn a favourite apartment in Alfonso’s castle of Ferrara; the series being completed a little later on by that crown and climax of the whole set, the Bacchus and Ariadne of the National Gallery.

Bellini appears in an unfamiliar phase in this final production of his magnificent old age, on which the signature, together with the date, 1514, so carefully noted by Vasari, is still most distinctly to be read.  Much less Giorgionesque—­if the term be in this case permissible—­and more Quattrocentist in style than in the immediately preceding altar-piece of S. Giovanni Crisostomo, he is here hardly less interesting.  All admirers of his art are familiar with the four beautiful Allegories of the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Venice, which constitute, besides the present picture, almost his sole excursion into the regions of pagan mythology and symbolism.  These belong, however, to a considerably earlier period of his maturity, and show a fire which in the Bacchanal has died out.[33] Vasari describes this Bacchanal as “one of the most beautiful works ever executed by Gian Bellino,” and goes on to remark that it has in the draperies “a certain angular (or cutting) quality in accordance with the German style.”  He strangely attributes this to an imitation of Duerer’s