The other great Frari picture—­stronger than this but not more attractive—­is the famous Titian altar-piece, the “Pesaro Madonna”.  This is an altar-piece indeed, and in it unite with peculiar success the world and the spirit.  The picture was painted for Jacopo Pesaro, a member of a family closely associated with this church, as the tombs will show us.  Jacopo, known as “Baffo,” is the kneeling figure, and, as his tonsure indicates, a man of God.  He was in fact Bishop of Paphos in Cyprus, and being of the church militant he had in 1501 commanded the Papal fleet against the Turks.  The expedition was triumphant enough to lead the Bishop to commission Titian to paint two pictures commemorating it.  In the first the Pope, Alexander Borgia, in full canonicals, standing, introduces Baffo, kneeling, to S. Peter, on the eve of starting with the ships to chastise the Infidel.  S. Peter blesses him and the Papal standard which he grasps.  In the second, the picture at which we are now looking (see the reproduction opposite page 246), Baffo again kneels to S. Peter, while behind him a soldier in armour (who might be S. George and might merely be a Venetian warrior and a portrait) exhibits a captured Turk.  Above S. Peter is the Madonna, with one of Titian’s most adorable and vigorous Babes.  Beside her are S. Francis and S. Anthony of Padua, S. Francis being the speaking brother who seems to be saying much good of the intrepid but by no means over-modest Baffo.  The other kneeling figures are various Pesari.  Everything about the picture is masterly and aristocratic, and S. Peter yields to no other old man in Venetian art, which so valued and respected age, in dignity and grandeur.  In the clouds above all are two outrageously plump cherubs—­fat as butter, as we say—­sporting (it is the only word) with the cross.

As I sat one day looking at this picture, a small grey and white cat sprang on my knee from nowhere and immediately sank into a profound slumber from which I hesitated to wake it.  Such ingratiating acts are not common in Venice, where animals are scarce and all dogs must be muzzled.  Whether or not the spirit of Titian had instructed the little creature to keep me there, I cannot say, but the result was that I sat for a quarter of an hour before the altar without a movement, so that every particular of the painting is photographed on my retina.  Six months later the same cat led me to a courtyard opposite the Sacristy door and proudly exhibited three kittens.

Jacopo Pesaro’s tomb is near the Baptistery.  The enormous and repellent tomb on the same wall as the Titian altar-piece is that of a later Pesaro, Giovanni, an unimportant Doge of Venice for less than a year, 1658-1659.  It has grotesque details, including a camel, giant negroes and skeletons, and it was designed by the architect of S. Maria della Salute, who ought to have known better.  The Doge himself is not unlike the author of a secretly published English novel entitled The Woman Thou Gavest Me.