that of Michael Angelo's composition only one small copy exists; of Lionardo's, not one. From a fragment which existed in his time, but which has since disappeared, Rubens made a fine drawing, which was engraved by Edelinck, and is known as the Battle of the Standard.

man.

It was a reproach against Lionardo, in his own time, that he began many things and finished few; that his magnificent designs and projects, whether it art or mechanics, were seldom completed. This may be a subject of regret, but it is unjust to make it a reproach. It was in the nature of the The grasp of his mind was so nearly superhuman, that he never, in anything he effected, satisfied himself or realized his own vast conceptions. The most exquisitely finished of his works, those that in the perfection of the execution have excited the wonder and despair of succeeding artists, were put aside by him as unfinished sketches. Most of the pictures now attributed to him were wholly or in part painted by his scholars and imitators from his cartoons. One of the most famous of these was designed for the altarpiece of the church of the convent called the Nunziata. It represented the Virgin Mary seated in the lap of her mother, St. Anna, having in her arms the infant Christ, while St. John is playing with a lamb at their feet; St. Anna, looking on with a tender smile, rejoices in her divine offspring. The figures were drawn with such skill, and the various expressions proper to each conveyed with such inimitable truth and grace, that, when exhibited in a chamber of the convent, the inhabitants of the city flocked to see it, and for two days the streets were crowded with people, “as if it had been some solemn festival"; but the picture was never painted, and the monks of the Nunziata, after waiting leng and in vain for their altar-piece, were obliged to employ other artists. The cartoon, or a very fine repetition of it, is now in the possession of the Royal Academy, and it must not be confounded with the St. Anna in the Louvre, a more fantastic and apparently an earlier composition.

Lionardo, during his stay at Florence, painted the portrait of Ginevra Benci, already mentioned, in the memoir of Ghirlandajo, as the reigning beauty of her time; and also the portrait of Mona Lisa del Giocondo, sometimes called La Joconde. On this last picture he worked at intervals for four years, but was still unsatisfied. It was purchased by Francis I. for four thousand golden crowns, and is now in the Louvre. We find Lionardo also engaged by Cæsar Borgia to visit and report on the fortifications of his territories, and in this office he was employed for two years. In 1514 he was invited to Rome by Leo X., but more in his character of philosopher, mechanic, and alchemist, than as a painter. Here he found Raphael at the height of his fame, and then engaged in his greatest works, the frescos of the Vatican. Two pictures which Lionardo painted while at Rome the Madonna of St. Onofrio, and the Holy Family, painted for Filiberta of Savoy, the Pope's sister-in-law (which is now at St. Petersburg) show that even this veteran in art felt the irresistible influence of the genius of his young rival. They were both Raffaellesque in the subject and treatment.

It appears that Lionardo was ill-satisfied with his sojourn at Rome. He had long been accustomed to hold the first rank as an artist wherever he resided; whereas at Rome he found himself only one among many who, if they acknowledged his greatness, affected to consider his day as past. He was conscious that many of the improvements n the arts which were now brought into use, and which enabled the painters of the day to produce such extraordinary effects, were invented or introduced by himself. If he could no longer assert that measureless superiority over all others which he had done in his younger days, it was because he himself had opened to them new paths to excellence. The arrival of his old competitor Michael Angelo, and some slight on the part of Leo X., who was annoyed by his spec

ulative and dilatory habits in executing the works intrusted to him, all added to his irritation and disgust. He left Rome, and set out for Pavia, where the French king Francis I. then held his court. He was received by the young monarch with every mark of respect, loaded with favors, and a pension of seven hundred gold crowns settled on him for life. At the famous conference between Francis I. and Leo X. at Bologna, Lionardo attended his new patron, and was of essential service to him on that occasion. In the following year, 1516, he returned with Francis I. to France, and was attached to the French court as principal painter. It appears, however, that during his residence in France he did not paint a single picture. His health had begun to decline from the time he left Italy; and, feeling his end approach, he prepared himself for it by religious meditation, by acts of charity, and by a most conscientious distribution by will of all his worldly possessions to his relatives and friends. At length, after protracted suffering, this great and most extraordinary man died at Cloux, near Amboise, on the 2d of May, 1519, being then in his sixty-seventh year. It is to be regretted that we cannot wholly credit the beautiful story of his dying in the arms of Francis I., who, as it is said, had come to visit him on his death-bed. It would, indeed, have been, as Fuseli expressed it, "an honor to the king, by which Destiny would have atoned to that monarch for his future disaster at Pavia," had the incident really happened, as it has been so often related by biogra phers, celebrated by poets, represented with a just pride by painters, and willingly believed by all the world; but the well-authenticated fact that the court was on that day at St. Germain-en-Laye, whence the royal ordinances are dated, renders the story, unhappily, very doubtful.

TITIAN.

TIZIANO VECELLI was born at Cadore in the Friuli, a district to the north of Venice, where the ancient family of the Vecelli had been long settled. There is something very amusing and characteristic in the first indication of his love of art; for while it is recorded of other young artists that they took a piece of charcoal or a piece of slate to trace the images in their fancy, we are told that the infant Titian, with an instinctive feeling prophetic of his future excellence as a colorist, used the expressed juice of certain flowers to paint a figure of a Madonna. When he was a boy of nine years old his father, Gregorio, carried him to Venice and placed him under the tuition of Sebastian Zuccato, a painter and worker in mosaic. He left this school for that of the Bellini, where the friendship and fellowship of Giorgione seems early to have awakened his mind to new ideas of art and color. Albert Durer, who was at Venice in 1494, and again in 1507, also influenced him. At this time, when Titian and Giorgione were youths of eighteen and nineteen, they lived and worked together. It has been related that they were employed in painting the frescos of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. The preference being given to Titian's performance, which represented the story of Judith, caused such a jealousy between the two friends, that they ceased to reside together; but at this time, and for some years afterwards, the influence of Giorgione on the mind and the style of Titian was such that it became difficult to distinguish their works; and on the death of Giorgione, Titian was required to complete his unfinished pictures. This great loss to Venice and the world left him in the prime of youth without a rival. We find him for a few years chiefly employed in decorating the palaces of the Venetian nobles, both in the city and on the mainland.

The first of his historical compositions which is celebrated by his biographers is the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, a large picture, now in the Academy of Arts at Venice; and the first portrait recorded is that of Catherine, Queen of Cyprus, of which numerous repetitions and copies were scattered over all Italy. There is a fine original in the Dresden Gallery. This unhappy Catherine Cornaro, the " daughter of St. Mark," having been forced to abdicate her crown in favor of the Venetian state, was at this time living in a sort of honorable captivity at Venice. She had been a widow for forty years, and he has represented her in deep mourning, holding a rosary in her hand, the face still bearing traces of that beauty for which she was celebrated.

It appears that Titian was married about 1512, but of his wife we do not hear anything more. It is said that her name was Lucia, and we know that she bore him three chil dren, two sons, and a daughter called Lavinia. It seems probable, on a comparison of dates, that she died about the year 1530.

One of the earliest works on which Titian was engaged was the decoration of the convent of St. Antony, at Padua, in which he executed a series of frescos from the life of St. Antony. He was next summoned to Ferrara by the Duke Alphonso I., and was employed in his service for at least two years. He painted for this prince the beautiful picture of Bacchus and Ariadne, which is now in the National Gallery, and which represents on a small scale an epitome of all the beauties which characterize Titian, in the rich, picturesque, animated composition, in the ardor of Bacchus, who flings himself from his car to pursue Ariadne; the dancing bacchanals, the frantic grace of the bacchante, and the little joyous satyr in front, trailing the head of the sacrifice. He painted for the same prince two other festive subjects: one in which a nymph and two men are dancing, while another