flag which she holds, was only used in Venice by newly betrothed ladies; and this fixes the time of the portrait as 1555, the date of the marriage contract.  The execution is beyond all comparison finer here, the colour more transparent in its warmth, than in the more celebrated Berlin piece.  Quite eight or ten years later than this must date the Salome of the Prado Gallery, which is in general design a variation of the Lavinia of Berlin.  The figure holding up—­a grim substitute for the salver of fruit—­the head of St. John on a charger has probably been painted without any fresh reference to the model.  The writer is unable to agree with Crowe and Cavalcaselle when they affirm that this Salome is certainly painted by one of the master’s followers.  The touch is assuredly Titian’s own in the very late time, and the canvas, though much slighter and less deliberate in execution than its predecessors, is in some respects more spontaneous, more vibrant in touch.  Second to none as a work of art—­indeed more striking than any in the naive and fearless truth of the rendering—­is the Lavinia Sarcinelli as a Matron in the Dresden Gallery.  Morelli surely exaggerates a little when he describes Lavinia here as a woman of forty.  Though the demure, bright-eyed maiden has grown into a self-possessed Venetian dame of portentous dimensions, Sarcinelli’s spouse is fresh still, and cannot be more than two-or three-and-thirty.  This assumption, if accepted, would fix the time of origin of the picture at about 1565, and, reasoning from analogies of technique, this appears to be a more acceptable date than the year 1570-72, at which Morelli would place it.

[Illustration:  Titian’s Daughter Lavinia.]

One of the most important chapters in our master’s life closed with the death of Aretino, which took place suddenly on the 21st of October 1556.  He had been sitting at table with friends far into the night or morning.  One of them, describing to him a farcical incident of Rabelaisian quality, he threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter, and slipping on the polished floor, was thrown with great force on his head and killed almost instantaneously.  This was indeed the violent and sudden death of the strong, licentious man; poetic justice could have devised no more fitting end to such a life.

In the year 1558 Crowe and Cavalcaselle, for very sufficient reasons, place the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, now preserved in the hideously over-ornate Church of the Jesuits at Venice.  To the very remarkable analysis which they furnish of this work, the writer feels unable to add anything appreciable by way of comment, for the simple reason that though he has seen it many times, on no occasion has he been fortunate enough to obtain such a light as would enable him to judge the picture on its own merits as it now stands.[48] Of a design more studied in its rhythm, more akin to the Florentine and Roman schools, than anything