This brief and rather hurried review of Titian's life and work has brought us to his middle age and we find him now almost at the zenith of his fame, though his powers have not yet reached their ripest and fullest expression. Venice, Mantua, and Urbino have acknowledged his talent, while if Pope and Sultan have not actually sat to him for their portraits they have sent him other men's work to copy. The great Charles V., who seemed bent upon holding all western and central Europe in the hollow of his hand, was his friend and patron, and we see what manner of man he was from the pictures in the Prado. The first, painted in the very early years of their acquaintance, shows Charles with a great hound by his side. His right hand rests on his dagger, his left on the dog's collar, he wears the chain of the Golden Fleece, and seems a man born to command. Belonging, of course, to a much later date is the other portrait of Charles at the Battle of MÜhlburg, perhaps even less a monument of Titian's skill than an enduring record of the terrible craze for repainting that beset Spain until recent years, and is not unknown to-day, though public opinion has had some effect even in Madrid. It is not generally known that there is a Spanish official who has a salaried engagement to assist the old masters whose work shows signs of fading, and without wishing to be hypercritical it is reasonable to remark that these officials in a laudable anxiety to earn their stipend have done irreparable damage to much work that they were not fit to approach.

Charles proceeded to put the crown upon Titian's reputation by sending him in 1533 a patent of nobility, and making him a Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur. Among the stories that receive a sort of sanction from age is one to the effect that Charles V. once picked up a brush that Titian had dropped, and said to his astonished courtiers that such a man was worthy of having an emperor to serve him. Stories of this kind seem to flourish in Spain. Students of the life of Velazquez will not forget the legend that Philip IV. painted the cross of St. Iago upon the painter's cloak when he saw the famous picture "Las MeniÑas," in order to give the most fitting expression of his admiration. This story contrasts strangely with the true facts of the case. Charles went even further than to give the patent of nobility to Titian, he made a determined effort to persuade him to live in Madrid altogether. Very wisely Titian refused the offers; he was a Venetian at heart, and a free man. To be a citizen of Venice was an honour for which even a Charles V. could hardly find an effective substitute.

There is no reason to believe that Titian would have fared any better in the wind-swept, heat-stricken capital of Spain than Velazquez fared in the years that brought Philip IV. to the throne. At the splendid court of Charles V. Titian would soon have become a mere official painter, he would have been compelled to paint to order and endure the snubs and buffets of the blue-blooded, but uncultivated courtiers attached to the royal establishment. Moreover, the Venetians did not like Spanish methods of dealing with matters of art and faith; to Titian their attitude would have appeared intolerable.

Although he was a painter, Titian had little of the temperament that is generally associated with artists. His genius was allied to sound commercial instincts, and he chose for intimates and advisers men whose practical experience of the world and of affairs was at least as great as his own, in some cases even greater. Of these Pietro Aretino, father of modern journalists, was one of the most sagacious and quite the most remarkable. His voluminous letters tell us a great deal about Titian to whom he played the part of mentor, and they reveal the writer as a man of great shrewdness who moved in the highest circles in many cities, living largely by his wits, and wielding a pen that was often sharper than a sword and was certainly more feared. He found Titian as valuable to him as he was useful to Titian, and, when any delicate negotiations were to the fore Aretino's large circle of friends and patrons, his ready tongue and fluent pen were at the service of the painter. His portrait painted by Titian was till recently in Rome and reveals a man with massive head, sagacious expression, and a curious likeness to Dr. Hans Richter the famous musician. His letters are still read with interest by those who like to look back over the course of life in the sixteenth century.

At a time when he had passed middle age, Titian would seem to have exhausted for the moment the possibilities of Venice. We have seen that the Fathers of the City had been a little vexed with his delay in painting the "Battle of Cadore" in the Hall of the Grand Council. He had received a State allowance in order to enable him to paint it, and twenty years had not sufficed him for the completion of the commission. When he was threatened with the loss of his money and dignities by the indignant Councillors, whose patience at the end of two decades was quite stale, he did set to work, and satisfied them that the picture was worth the waiting. But they could hardly have been inclined to extend much more patronage to a man who allowed the rulers of other States to turn his attention from commissioned work, and never hesitated to leave it for years at a time when other and more remunerative orders came to hand. Moreover the great churches were fairly well filled, and the smaller ones could hardly afford to employ the greatest master of the day. So Pietro Aretino, perhaps casting about to do his friend a good turn, bethought him of his influence in Rome, and addressed certain letters to the leading lights of Mother Church who were to be found there. These letters were doubtless supervised by Titian himself, because they bear a striking likeness in phraseology to the petition the painter had addressed to the Council of Ten in the days when he was little known, and Gian Bellini was still working for the State. Then, it will be remembered, the painter declared that he had been asked to go to Rome but preferred to stay in Venice; now Aretino told the Romans that Titian had been invited to go to Madrid but preferred to work in Rome. So it happened early in the 'forties that, through the useful Aretino, Titian entered into relations with the Farnese family, who were represented in the Papal Chair by Pope Paul III. The result was that Titian was invited to Ferrara, where he met the Pope and painted his portrait.

The whole correspondence, so far as it can be seen, would seem to suggest that Titian and Aretino managed this business exceedingly well. When the painter found that his ambition was within measurable distance of being gratified, and that his graceless elder son for whom he had entered a special plea, was to receive a benefice, he seems to have remembered that Venice held many attractions for him, and that he could not leave it in a hurry. Not until the close of 1545 did he visit the Eternal City, only to regret that the greater part of his life had been passed outside its walls.

As soon as he was established in Rome, Titian found himself received by princes and prelates in fashion befitting his age and reputation. And Giorgio Vasari, the author of the great work on Italian artists, was commissioned, by one of the heads of the house of Farnese, to show the painter the wonders of the city.

To the Farnese family Titian's visit was of the first importance because its Pope and Cardinal were his first patrons, and he painted many pictures for them. Paul III. was no more than ten years older than the painter and had not long to live. He sat to Titian several times; two of the portraits are to be seen in Naples and there are others to be seen elsewhere. In addition to the fine memorials of the Farnese Pope, Naples holds several of Titian's masterpieces, including the splendid "DanÄe," a "Philip II.," and a "Mary Magdalen." Those who are fortunate enough to obtain access to the really remarkable collection of pictures at Naples will not forget readily the striking portraits of the old Pope.

Titian stayed less than a year in the Eternal City in spite of the preparations he had made before undertaking the journey, and then returned to Venice with many honours, but without the long desired post for his son. Perhaps his departure gave offence to people in high places, perhaps his stay there had not been altogether as satisfactory as he had expected it to be, for despite flattering offers, despite the honour of Roman citizenship conferred upon him before he went home, he refused to return. He might have gone in the end in consideration of the preferment granted to Pomponio Vecelli his scapegrace son, but Charles V. sent for him, and he went instead to Augsburg, where the Emperor who had seen the fulfilment of so many of his hopes was living in great state, surrounded by as brilliant a court as the sixteenth century knew. In Augsburg Titian painted his most famous portrait of Charles V., the one showing the Emperor on horseback, which as has been stated, is to be seen to-day in the Prado in Madrid.

Titian remained in Augsburg for the greater part of a year before he returned to Venice, to find his studio, or work-shop as it would have been called in those days besieged by the envoys of the various European rulers who were all clamouring for portraits. From Venice the painter went to Milan at the invitation of Prince Philip of Spain (afterwards Philip II.) and at the close of 1550 he was back in Augsburg where he painted several portraits of Prince Philip of which perhaps the best is in the Prado. By the time he returned to Venice he would have been in the immediate neighbourhood of his eightieth year. His brush was never idle, and if the fruit of his labours could have been preserved in fire-proof galleries the gain to the world would have been enormous. Unfortunately we have to face the unpleasant truth that considerably more than half his life work has been lost.