he received the picture in London.  A long horizontal furrow is clearly to be seen running right across the canvas.  Apart from the consideration that pupils no doubt had a hand in the work, it lacks, with all its decorative elegance and felicity of movement, the charm with which Titian, both much earlier in his career and later on towards the end, could invest such mythological subjects.[46] That the aim of the artist was not a very high one, or this poesia very near to his heart, is demonstrated by the amusingly material fashion in which he recommends it to his royal patron.  He says that “if in the Danae the forms were to be seen front-wise, here was occasion to look at them from a contrary direction—­a pleasant variety for the ornament of a Camerino.”  Our worldly-wise painter evidently knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to captivate Philip.  It cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in his life and practice.

The new Doge Francesco Venier had, upon his accession in 1554, called upon Titian to paint, besides his own portrait, the orthodox votive picture of his predecessor Marcantonio Trevisan, and this official performance was duly completed in January 1555, and hung in the Sala de’ Pregadi.  At the same time Venier determined that thus tardily the memory of a long—­deceased Doge, Antonio Grimani, should be rehabilitated by the dedication to him of a similar but more dramatic and allusive composition.  The commission for this piece also was given to Titian, who made good progress with it, yet for reasons unexplained never carried the important undertaking to completion.  It remained in the workshop at the time of his death, and was completed—­with what divergence from the original design we cannot authoritatively say—­by assistants.  Antonio Grimani, supported by members of his house, or officers attached to his person, kneels in adoration before an emblematic figure of Faith which appears in the clouds holding the cross and chalice, which winged child-angels help to support, and haloed round with an oval glory of cherubim—­a conception, by the way, quite new and not at all orthodox.  To the left appears a majestic figure of St. Mark, while the clouds upon which Faith is upborne, rise just sufficiently to show a very realistic prospect of Venice.  There is not to be found in the whole life-work of Titian a clumsier or more disjointed composition as a whole, even making the necessary allowances for alterations, additions, and restorations.  Though the figure of Faith is a sufficiently noble conception in itself, the group which it makes with the attendant angels is inexplicably heavy and awkward in arrangement; the flying pulli have none of the audacious grace and buoyancy that Lotto or Correggio would have imparted to them, none of the rush of Tintoretto.