The work is wholly copied from the life, and is considered the best, most animated, and most beautiful picture in the Hall.[1] In the same Palace, at the foot of one of the staircases, our artist depicted a Madonna in fresco.
No long time after, Titian painted a Picture for a gentleman of the Contarini family, the subject was Our Saviour at Table with Cleophas and Luke; but the gentleman, considering that the beauty of the work rendered it worthy to be seen in public—as it certainly is—presented it, he being a lover of his country, as a gift to the Signoria, when it was kept for some time in the apartments of the Doge, but it is now placed in a more public position, and where it can be seen by all, over the Door of the Hall leading to that of the Council of Ten namely.[2] About the same time our artist executed a picture of the Virgin ascending the Steps of the Temple, for the Scuola of Santa Maria della Carita: the Heads in this work are all portraits from the life.[3] He also painted a small Picture of St. Jerome doing Penance, for the Scuola of San Faustino; this was much commended by artists, but was destroyed by fire about two years since, together with the whole church.
In 1530, when the Emperor Charles V. was in Bologna, Titian, by the intervention of Pietro Aretino, was invited to that city by the Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici, and there he made a magnificent Portrait of his Majesty in full armour. This gave so much satisfaction that the artist received a present of a thousand crowns for the same.[4] Out of these he had subsequently to give the half to Alfonso Lombardi the sculptor, who had made a model of that monarch to be executed in marble, as we have related in his Life.
Having returned to Venice, Titian there found that many gentlemen had begun to favour Pordenone, commending exceedingly the works executed by that artist in the Ceiling of the Hall of the Pregai, and elsewhere. They had also procured him the commission for a small Picture in the
- ↑ This work perished, with many others, in the conflagration of the Palace. There is one in the Louvre of similar character, and by the hand of Titian, but this may be that painted for the Marchese Federigo Conzaga in 1531. See Gaye, Cartegqio inedito d’Ariisti, vol. ii. p. 164.
- ↑ Not now in the Palace.
- ↑ Now in the Gallery of the Venetian Academy.
- ↑ Now in the Royal Gallery of Madrid.—Förster,
