and was afterwards extensively repainted.  The Marquis and his son Francesco, both of them full-length figures, are placed on a low plinth, to the left, and from this point of vantage the Spanish leader addresses a company of foot-soldiers who with fine effect raise their halberds high into the air.[29] Among these last tradition places a portrait of Aretino, which is not now to be recognised with any certainty.  Were the pedigree of the canvas a less well-authenticated one, one might be tempted to deny Titian’s authorship altogether, so extraordinary are, apart from other considerations, the disproportions in the figure of the youth Francesco.  Restoration must in this instance have amounted to entire repainting.  Del Vasto appears more robust, more martial, and slightly younger than the armed leader in the Allegory of the Louvre.  If this last picture is to be accepted as a semi-idealised presentment of the Spanish captain, it must, as has already been pointed out, have been painted nearer to the time of his death, which took place in 1546.  The often-cited biographers of our master are clearly in error in their conclusion that the painting described in the collection of Charles I. as “done by Titian, the picture of the Marquis Guasto, containing five half-figures so big as the life, which the king bought out of an Almonedo,” is identical with the large sketch made by Titian as a preparation for the Allocution of Madrid.  This description, on the contrary, applies perfectly to the Allegory of the Louvre, which was, as we know, included in the collection of Charles, and subsequently found its way into that of Louis Quatorze.

[Illustration:  The Magdalen.  Pitti Palace, Florence.  From a Photograph by Anderson.]

It was in 1542 that Vasari, summoned to Venice at the suggestion of Aretino, paid his first visit to the city of the Lagoons in order to paint the scenery and apparato in connection with a carnival performance, which included the representation of his fellow-townsman’s Talanta.[30] It was on this occasion, no doubt, that Sansovino, in agreement with Titian, obtained for the Florentine the commission to paint the ceilings of Santo Spirito in Isola—­a commission which was afterwards, as a consequence of his departure, undertaken and performed by Titian himself, with whose grandiose canvases we shall have to deal a little later on.  In weighing the value of Vasari’s testimony with reference to the works of Vecellio and other Venetian painters more or less of his own time, it should be borne in mind that he paid two successive visits to Venice, enjoying there the company of the great painter and the most eminent artists of the day, and that on the occasion of Titian’s memorable visit to Rome he was his close friend, cicerone, and companion.  Allowing for the Aretine biographer’s well-known inaccuracies in matters of detail and for his royal disregard of chronological order—­faults for which it is manifestly absurd to blame him over-severely—­it would be unwise lightly to disregard or overrule his testimony with regard to matters which he may have learned from the lips of Titian himself and his immediate entourage.