willingly renouncing all its rights.  No purpose would be served here by recording how much paint has been abraded in one corner, how much added in another.  A deep sense of thankfulness should possess us that the highest manifestation of Titian’s genius has been preserved, even though it be shorn of some of its original beauty.  Splendidly armed in steel from head to foot, and holding firmly grasped in his hand the spear, emblem of command in this instance rather than of combat, Caesar advances with a mien impassive yet of irresistible domination.  He bestrides with ease his splendid dark-brown charger, caparisoned in crimson, and heavily weighted like himself with the full panoply of battle, a perfect harmony being here subtly suggested between man and beast.  The rich landscape, with a gleam of the Elbe in the distance, is still in the half gloom of earliest day; but on the horizon, and in the clouds overhead, glows the red ominous light of sunrise, colouring the veils of the morning mist.  The Emperor is alone—­alone as he must be in life and in death—­a man, yet lifted so high above other men that the world stretches far below at his feet, while above him this ruler knows no power but that of God.  It is not even the sneer of cold command, but a majesty far higher and more absolutely convinced of its divine origin, that awes the beholder as he gazes.  In comparison with the supreme dignity of this ugly, pallid Hapsburger, upon whom disease and death have already laid a shadowy finger, how artificial appear the divine assumptions of an Alexander, how theatrical the Olympian airs of an Augustus, how merely vulgar and ill-worn the imperial poses of a Napoleon.

[Illustration:  Charles V. at the Battle of Muehlberg.  Gallery of the Prado, Madrid.  From a Photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie.]

No veracious biographer of Titian could pretend that he is always thus imaginative, that coming in contact with a commanding human individuality he always thus unfolds the outer wrappings to reveal the soul within.  Indeed, especially in the middle time just past, he not infrequently contents himself with the splendid outsides of splendid things.  To interpret this masterpiece as the writer has ventured to do, it is not necessary to assume that Titian reasoned out the poetic vision, which was at the same time an absolutely veracious presentment, argumentatively with himself, as the painter of such a portrait in words might have done.  Pictorial genius of the creative order does not proceed by such methods, but sees its subject as a whole, leaving to others the task of probing and unravelling.  It should be borne in mind, too, that this is the first in order, as it is infinitely the greatest and the most significant among the vast equestrian portraits of monarchs by court painters.  Velazquez on the one hand, and Van Dyck on the other, have worked wonders in the same field.  Yet their finest productions, even the Philip IV., the Conde Duque Olivarez, the Don Balthasar Carlos of the Spaniard, even the two equestrian portraits of Charles I., the Francisco de Moncada, the Prince Thomas of Savoy of the Fleming, are in comparison but magnificent show pieces aiming above all at decorative pomp and an imposing general effect.