F.” on the collar of the Pharisee’s shirt is an additional argument in favour of maintaining its date as originally given by Vasari (1514), instead of putting it back to 1508 or thereabouts.  Among a good many other paintings with this last signature may be mentioned the Jeune Homme au Gant and Vierge au Lapin of the Louvre; the Madonna with St. Anthony Abbot of the Uffizi; the Bacchus and Ariadne, the Assunta, the St. Sebastian of Brescia (dated 1522).  The Virgin and Child with St. Catherine of the National Gallery, and the Christ with the Pilgrims at Emmaus of the Louvre—­neither of them early works—­are signed “Tician.”  The usual signature of the later time is “Titianus F.,” among the first works to show it being the Ancona altar-piece and the great Madonna di San Niccolo now in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican.  It has been incorrectly stated that the late St. Jerome of the Brera bears the earlier signature, “Ticianus F.”  This is not the case.  The signature is most distinctly “Titianus,” though in a somewhat unusual character.

[31] Crowe and Cavalcaselle describe it as a “picture which has not its equal in any period of Giorgione’s practice” (History of Painting in North Italy, vol. ii.).

[32] Among other notable portraits belonging to this early period, but to which within it the writer hesitates to assign an exact place, are the so-called Titian’s Physician Parma, No. 167 in the Vienna Gallery; the first-rate Portrait of a Young Man (once falsely named Pietro Aretino), No. 1111 in the Alte Pinakothek of Munich; the so-called Alessandro de’ Medici in the Hampton Court Gallery.  The last-named portrait is a work injured, no doubt, but of extraordinary force and conciseness in the painting, and of no less singular power in the characterisation of a sinister personage whose true name has not yet been discovered.

[33] The fifth Allegory, representing a sphinx or chimaera—­now framed with the rest as the centre of an ensemble—­is from another and far inferior hand, and, moreover, of different dimensions.  The so-called Venus of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna is, notwithstanding the signature of Bellini and the date (MDXV.), by Bissolo.

[34] In Bellini’s share in the landscape there is not a little to remind the beholder of the Death of St. Peter Martyr to be found in the Venetian room of the National Gallery, where it is still assigned to the great master himself, though it is beyond reasonable doubt by one of his late pupils or followers.

[35] The enlarged second edition, with the profile portrait of Ariosto by Titian, did not appear until 1532.  Among the additions then made were the often-quoted lines in which the poet, enumerating the greatest painters of the time, couples Titian with Leonardo, Andrea Mantegna, Gian Bellino, the two Dossi, Michelangelo, Sebastiano, and Raffael (33rd canto, 2nd ed.).