182 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

The staircase leading out of this room descends¹ into the Hall of Titian’s Assumption, where I have said nothing yet of his last picture (400), nor of that called in the Guide-books an example of his first style (95).

It has always been with me an intended piece of work to trace the real method of Titian’s study, and the changes of his mind. But I shall never do it now;* and am hitherto entirely unacquainted with his early work. If this be indeed his, and a juvenile piece, it indicates a breadth of manner, and conventionally artistic way of looking at nature, entirely peculiar to him, or to his æra. The picture which he left unfinished might most fittingly be called the Shadow of Death. It is full of the profoundest metaphysical interest to me; but cannot be analysed here.

In general, Titian is ill-represented in his own Venice. The best example of him, by far, is the portrait group of the Pesaro family in the Frari.² The St. Mark in the Sacristy of the Salute was, in my early days, entirely glorious; but has been daubed over into ruin. The roof of the Sacristy in the Salute; with the fresco of St. Christopher,† and the portrait of the Doge Grimani before Faith, in the Ducal Palace, are all the remnants of him that are worth study here, since the destruction in the

* For reasons which any acute reader may enough discover in my lecture on Michael Angelo and Tintoret.³

† An admirable account of this fresco is given by Mr. Edward Cheney, in Original Documents relating to Venetian Painters and their Pictures, pp. 60, 61.

¹ [Not now; the “Hall” is Room II. But Titian’s “last picture” (“The Deposition”) is in Room X., and No. 95 (“The Visitation of St. Elizabeth”) is in Room XIX. The latter picture is now ascribed in the official catalogue to Sebastiano Luciani (del Piombo).]

² [For notices of this picture, see Vol. VII. p. 225, Vol. XXI. p. 36 (No. 106); and for the works in the Salute, Vol. XI. p. 429. The fresco of “St. Christopher” is painted over an unused door in the Ducal Palace which led from the Doge’s private apartments into the chapel. For notices of “the Doge Grimani before Faith,” see Vol. XI. p. 373 and n.; and for the “Peter Martyr,” Vol. III. p. 28 n.]

³ [See, for instance, Vol. XXII. p. 83.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]