Titian’s first portrait of the Emperor, a full-length in which he appeared in armour with a generalissimo’s baton of command, was taken in 1556 from Brussels to Madrid, after the formal ceremony of abdication, and perished, it would appear, in one of the too numerous fires which have devastated from time to time the royal palaces of the Spanish capital and its neighbourhood.  To the same period belongs, no doubt, the noble full-length of Charles in gala court costume which now hangs in the Sala de la Reina Isabel in the Prado Gallery, as a pendant to Titian’s portrait of Philip II. in youth.  Crowe and Cavalcaselle assume that not this picture, but a replica, was the one which found its way into Charles I.’s collection, and was there catalogued by Van der Doort as “the Emperor Charles the Fifth, brought by the king from Spain, being done at length with a big white Irish dog”—­going afterwards, at the dispersal of the king’s effects, to Sir Balthasar Gerbier for L150.  There is, however, no valid reason for doubting that this is the very picture owned for a time by Charles I., and which busy intriguing Gerbier afterwards bought, only to part with it to Cardenas the Spanish ambassador.[10] Other famous originals by Titian were among the choicest gifts made by Philip IV. to Prince Charles at the time of his runaway expedition to Madrid with the Duke of Buckingham, and this was no doubt among them.  Confirmation is supplied by the fact that the references to the existence of this picture in the royal palaces of Madrid are for the reigns of Philip II., Charles II., and Charles III., thus leaving a large gap unaccounted for.  Dimmed as the great portrait is, robbed of its glow and its chastened splendour in a variety of ways, it is still a rare example of the master’s unequalled power in rendering race, the unaffected consciousness of exalted rank, natural as distinguished from assumed dignity.  There is here no demonstrative assertion of grandeza, no menacing display of truculent authority, but an absolutely serene and simple attitude such as can only be the outcome of a consciousness of supreme rank and responsibility which it can never have occurred to any one to call into question.  To see and perpetuate these subtle qualities, which go so far to redeem the physical drawbacks of the House of Hapsburg, the painter must have had a peculiar instinct for what is aristocratic in the higher sense of the word—­that is, both outwardly and inwardly distinguished.  This was indeed one of the leading characteristics of Titian’s great art, more especially in portraiture.  Giorgione went deeper, knowing the secret of the soul’s refinement, the aristocracy of poetry and passion; Lotto sympathetically laid bare the heart’s secrets and showed the pathetic helplessness of humanity.  Tintoretto communicated his own savage grandeur, his own unrest, to those whom he depicted; Paolo Veronese charmed without arriere-pensee by the intensity of vitality which with perfect simplicity he preserved in his sitters.  Yet to Titian must be conceded absolute supremacy in the rendering not only of the outward but of the essential dignity, the refinement of type and bearing, which without doubt come unconsciously to those who can boast a noble and illustrious ancestry.