682 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



seeing, their brows crowned with the aureole of success, masters of 

 themselves and of their fate. 



With this grand official style the portraits of Lorenzo Lotto have 

 little in common. As Van Dyck gave to all his sitters an aristocratic 

 elegance, so Lotto gives to his a romantic sadness. One of the most 

 haunting of all portraits is the Man with the Claw at Vienna. There 

 is perhaps in no other male face so much refinement and delicacy 

 combined with so wistful a melancholy. It is not surprising that in 

 the rearrangement of the Brera a whole room is given up to portraits 

 by Lotto ; and there are few rooms that are so haunting. 



The Lotto in the Ralph Cross Johnson collection represents a 

 Venetian senator, a man in middle life, clothed in the black garments 

 which Spanish fanaticism had forced upon the color-loving Italians, 

 and with a black hat. You can see that he was born to great posi- 

 tion, that he is calm, self-possessed, yet a little weary of it all ; that 

 the lesson of Solomon that all is vanity has not been lost upon his 

 soul. Lotto has tried to paint one of the official portraits in the style 

 of Titian, and has made a splendid masterpiece ; but despite himself, 

 something of his own romantic sadness has crept in. 



The most striking of the Italian pictures is the large portrait of a 

 cardinal by Titian. Here we have a man somewhat past middle 

 life, seated at a table on which is a cover of rich damask. Before 

 him lies an open book, from which he has just looked up. His face, 

 with its hollow cheeks and deeply sunken eyes, is that of a man ac- 

 customed to rule, a man of affairs and yet a scholar; and it is ap- 

 parent that greatness has brought no joy. The dark crimson robe 

 which he wears and the cap of that color, are so deep in their rich 

 tones, that only on a bright day can we realize their full splendor. 

 This is one of the grandest portraits in America, equally remarkable 

 for the force of characterization and the consummate technique. 



It is a far cry from the great age of Titian and Lotto to the days 

 of Francesco Guardi. Venetian art had flowered and died, and was 

 enjoying a brief revival at the hands of Tiepolo and Canaletto. Two 

 masters could not be further removed than these; Tiepolo with his 

 sketchy, impressionistic treatment, his vague outlines, his brilliant 

 colors, and his exuberant imagination; Canaletto with his photo- 

 graphic accuracy, his clear-cut lines, his gray tones and his un- 

 flinching realism. Guardi was the pupil of the latter, and in most 

 of his works closely adhered to his master's style, though with some- 

 what more of freedom and with somewhat richer tints. 



In this collection there are two large and notable pictures by 

 Guardi. One represents the church of Ara Coeli and the Capitol 

 at Eome. This is very like a Canaletto, and is a characteristic ex- 

 ample of Guardi's usual style at its best. In the other, a landscape 

 showing ruins with figures, he surpasses himself, and borrows from 



