to paint; and this portrait was allowed by Vasari to be a most masterly performance. His words are "He likewise drew the Signora Laura, who was afterwards married to the Duke, which is a stupendous work." Signor Muratori, who has got together infinite evidences, both from contemporary and subsequent authors, to prove that Signora Laura was the lawful wife of Alfonso the First, has not seen this passage from Vasari, which alone is worth all the rest. It is also observable that this writer has not made mention of the portrait of the Duchess Lucretia, described by Ridolfi in such a manner as to put it beyond all doubt that he had seen it: it is also wonderful that Ridolfi makes no mention of a portrait of the Signora Laura, which was done some years after the death of Lucretia. My doubts (says Ticozzi) about the portraits of Laura Eustochio and the Duchess Eleanora, ceased the 31st January 1816, when I saw, at the house of Count Leopold Cicognara, to whom the arts are so much indebted, the portrait of the former. This (according to the account given of it) is the picture in the Louvre, commonly called Titian's Mistress.* It is like

a servant-maid or country-girl.

* It cannot therefore be old Palma's daughter Violante.

In July 1521, Antonio Grimani, a man respected not less for his great age (being more than eighty-five) than for his political and moral virtues, succeeded to the long reign of the Doge Loredano. Titian soon complied with the obligations of his office, painting him in the act of being presented by St Mark and St Antony to the Virgin Mary; a picture which, for the novelty of invention and for the beauty of all the figures, particularly that of the Doge, which appears as if breathing, was considered the best thing in that sort of painting which had ever been done.

At this time, in order to leave his country and friends a living memorial of himself, he presented to the family of Titian Vecelli, his cousin, his own portrait, which was perhaps the first he had done of himself: a portrait the more valuable as it shows him in the flower of his manhood; while all the others that we have of him, not excepting those executed by other artists, represent him in a rather advanced age. Of so precious a memorial, which was however preserved with jealous care by the family as an inalienable property,* there only remains a

* This portrait, and a copy of the Venus and Adonis, were in the common division of that family declared to be common property, as the incomparable and precious gift of their relation Titian.

copy at Venice, which is a tolerably good one, the original having passed in 1728, or soon after, into the royal gallery of Florence, who obtained it by means of Marco Ricci, a Bellunese painter.

The fate of the second is not known; the first is said to have been sold, in 1728, to Marco Ricci, by a certain Osvaldo Zuliano, who made a bad use of his quality of guardian to Alexander Vecelli. Under cover of having it valued by a professor of the art in Venice, having taken it there, he pretended to have it sent back to Cadore, because it was found to be of no value, by means of a person who never made his appearance. Shortly after his ward discovered that it was in the gallery at Florence, and all the fraud was laid open to him. Having lost all hope of recovering the picture, he claimed the value of it from the treacherous guardian, I know not with what success.

VOL. 11.

K

CHAPTER XXXI.

DEATH OF FATHER URBANO BOLZANIO, AN INTIMATE FRIEND OF TITIAN, AND THE ELECTION OF DOGE ANDREA GRITTI

ST PETER

HIS

PORTRAIT-PICTURE OF THE

MARTYR-BATTLE OF THE GHIARADADDA,

PAINTED IN THE GREATER COUNCIL CHAMBEROTHER WORKS ABOUT THE YEAR 1527, IN VENICE

AND ELSEWHERE.

IN 1523, Titian lost in F. Urbano Bolzanio a respected friend, to whom, more than to any one else, he was indebted for the most serviceable protection of Andrea Gritti, created Doge a short time before Urbano died. And it is not moreover far from the truth, that from this most learned old man, who boasted of having in him a friend and fellow-citizen, he received advice and directions for the study of the remains of Greek sculpture, some of which were in Venice, left in the greatest neglect; besides a number of others, of which Urbano had a thorough knowledge as of things of

great value, which he had seen in the Levant, and also more particularly at Rome and Florence.*

And in consequence of the obligation annexed to the office of La Sensaria, and the very great regard he professed for the new Doge, he painted him in a large picture, with many other figures of Saints, in the same way as the portrait of the Doge Grimani, and in a beautiful manner, which appeared to Vasari and every body who saw it, a most wonderful attempt. This, unhappily, unhappily, being placed in the hall of the college, perished with other valuable pictures in the fire of 1576.

About this time Titian painted the St Peter Martyr, of which a circumstantial account has been already given.†

Although already rich in the excellent works

* Urbano Bolzanio, as may be seen in the Life published of him in the Literary History of the Department of Cadore, had written down in a journal all that he remarked in literature or the fine arts, in his travels through Greece, the Levant, Italy, and particularly all that had been effected by the Medici in Florence, where he remained some time as tutor to Giovanni de Medici, who was afterwards Leo X.

† Ridolfi relates a tradition of his time, to the purport that Pordenone and old Palma had begged to do a picture of St Peter Martyr in competition with Titian; and that a small sketch by Palma was preserved for a long time in the Palace Contarini di S. Samuele. With regard to the first, both his age and the rivalry manifested at that time against Titian render this tradition, if not