to Italy, the Italian contingent, instead of going in pursuit of the Sultan into Hungary, opportunely mutinied, thus affording to their pleasure-loving leader the desired pretext for riding back with them through the Austrian provinces, with eyes wilfully closed the while to their acts of depredation.  It was in the rich and fantastic habit of a Hungarian captain that the handsome young Medici was now painted by Titian at Bologna, the result being a portrait unique of its kind even in his life-work.  The sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the red-brown of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of Ippolito, the red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by him with such sovereign ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the technical sense hot, and of indescribable effect.  And this effect is centralised in the uncanny glance, the mysterious aspect of the man whom, as we see him here, a woman might love for his beauty, but a man would do well to distrust.  The smaller portrait painted by Titian about the same time of the young Cardinal fully armed—­the one which, with the Pitti picture, Vasari saw in the closet (guardaroba) of Cosimo, Duke of Tuscany—­is not now known to exist.[12]

[Illustration:  Francis the First.  Louvre.  From a Photograph by Neurdein.]

[Illustration:  Portrait of a Nobleman.  Pitti Palace, Florence.  From a Photograph by E. Alinari.]

It may be convenient to mention here one of the most magnificent among the male portraits of Titian, the Young Nobleman in the Sala di Marte of the Pitti Gallery, although its exact place in the middle time of the artist it is, failing all data on the point, not easy to determine.  At Florence there has somehow been attached to it the curious name Howard duca di Norfolk,[13] but upon what grounds, if any, the writer is unable to state.  The master of Cadore never painted a head more finely or with a more exquisite finesse, never more happily characterised a face, than that of this resolute, self-contained young patrician with the curly chestnut hair and the short, fine beard and moustache—­a personage high of rank, doubtless, notwithstanding the studied simplicity of his dress.  Because we know nothing of the sitter, and there is in his pose and general aspect nothing sensational, this masterpiece is, if not precisely not less celebrated among connoisseurs, at any rate less popular with the larger public, than it deserves to be.[14]

[Illustration:  S.  Giovanni Elemosinario giving Alms.  In the Church of that name at Venice.  From a Photograph by Naya.]