Again the writer hesitates to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when they place at this period, that is to say about 1533, the superb Allegory of the Louvre (No. 1589), which is very generally believed to represent the famous commander Alfonso d’Avalos, Marques del Vasto, with his family.  The eminent biographers of Titian connect the picture with the return of d’Avalos from the campaign against the Turks, undertaken by him in the autumn of 1532, under the leadership of Croy, at the behest of his imperial master.  They hazard the surmise that the picture, though painted after Alfonso’s return, symbolises his departure for the wars, “consoled by Victory, Love, and Hymen.”  A more natural conclusion would surely be that what Titian has sought to suggest is the return of the commander to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of victory.

[Illustration:  Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici.  Pitti Palace, Florence.  From a Photograph by G. Brogi.]

The Italo-Spanish grandee was born at Naples in 1502, so that at this date he would have been but thirty-one years of age, whereas the mailed warrior of the Allegory is at least forty, perhaps older.  Moreover, and this is the essential point, the technical qualities of the picture, the wonderful easy mastery of the handling, the peculiarities of the colouring and the general tone, surely point to a rather later date, to a period, indeed, some ten years ahead of the time at which we have arrived.  If we are to accept the tradition that this Allegory, or quasi-allegorical portrait-piece, giving a fanciful embodiment to the pleasures of martial domination, of conjugal love, of well-earned peace and plenty, represents d’Avalos, his consort Mary of Arragon, and their family—­and a comparison with the well-authenticated portrait of Del Vasto in the Allocution of Madrid does not carry with it entire conviction—­we must perforce place the Louvre picture some ten years later than do Crowe and Cavalcaselle.  Apart from the question of identification, it appears to the writer that the technical execution of the piece would lead to a similar conclusion.[11]

To this year, 1533, belongs one of the masterpieces in portraiture of our painter, the wonderful Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici in a Hungarian habit of the Pitti.  This youthful Prince of the Church, the natural son of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours, was born in 1511, so that when Titian so incomparably portrayed him, he was, for all the perfect maturity of his virile beauty, for all the perfect self-possession of his aspect, but twenty-two years of age.  He was the passionate worshipper of the divine Giulia Gonzaga, whose portrait he caused to be painted by Sebastiano del Piombo.  His part in the war undertaken by Charles V. in 1532, against the Turks, had been a strange one.  Clement VII., his relative, had appointed him Legate and sent him to Vienna at the head of three hundred musketeers.  But when Charles withdrew from the army to return