THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



his famous contemporary. Titian more especially devoted 

 himself to portrait painting, and held the office of painter by 

 appointment to the doges, or chief magistrates, of the Venetian 

 republic. He was patronised by the great emperor Charles V., 

 whose portrait he twice painted ; and it is 

 said that he accompanied the emperor to 

 Spain for some years. But the greater 

 part of his life was spent in Venice 

 itself, where most of his finest pictures 

 still remain. The great point of Titian's 

 work is the exquisite beauty and purity 

 of his colouring, for which he is gene- 

 rally considered to rank absolutely first. 

 There is a grand stateliness and dignity 

 about his portraits which are to be found 

 in few others. He has rendered for us 

 in undying colours the noble heads of the 

 great Venetian statesmen the proud 

 and wealthy leaders of a grea-t merchant 

 oligarchy whose haughty features and 

 splendid mien exactly suited his gran- 

 diose and princely style. The austere 

 faces, the broad and portly yet mag- 

 nificent figures, the stately robes, the 

 Italian profusion of velvet and silk, all 

 seemed as though designed on purpose 

 for his pencil. Titian's main importance 

 in the general history of art, indeed, 

 depends most especially on the fact that 

 he is the earliest great painter whose 

 claims rest chiefly upon his portraits, 

 and not upon devotional works or 

 idealised figure-pieces. He painted, 

 however, many pictures in these other 



lines, among which the " Sleeping Venus," in the Dresden 

 Gallery (familiar in numerous engravings), is perhaps the 

 best known to most English people. He took a great many 

 subjects also from classical literature, such as the " Bacchus 

 and Ariadne," "Venus and Adonis," and "Rape of Ganymede," 

 all in our own National Gallery. But he also chose others of 



Titian founded a large school of painters at Venice, most of 

 whom were his own pupils ; and the peculiar richness of colour- 

 ing which they learned from their master was one of their 

 distinguishing traits. Among them the most distinguished was 

 perhaps the painter whom we know as 

 Tintoretto, and who to some extent com 

 bined the Koman and Venetian manners, 

 imitating Titian in colouring and Raffael 

 and Michel Angelo in composition. He 

 may thus be considered as one of the 

 earliest eclectic painters, who form the 

 next great school that we must briefly 

 consider. 



With the general development of 

 science, civilisation, and intercourse 

 which took place during the sixteenth 

 century, a change began to come over 

 the spirit of the various small local 

 schools. Painters no longer spent the 

 greater part of their time in one city, 

 but went about from town to town, 

 studying the masterpieces of their 

 various predecessors. In this way, 

 what is known as the eclectic school 

 took its rise ; its great endeavour being 

 to combine the diverse excellences of 

 the acknowledged masters. A large 

 number of separate circumstances con- 

 duced to the growth of the eclectic spirit. 

 Towards the close of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, Italy and the world at large were 

 fast being revolutionised. The mediaeval 

 system was now thoroughly broken down,, 

 and the modern system was rapidly 



taking its place. Spain had already made her great conquests 

 in the New World, and the minds of men were filled with visions 

 of the El Dorado opening before them across the Atlantic. 

 Portugal had discovered the route to India round the Cape v oi' 

 Good Hope, and was in the heyday of her colonial greatness. 

 These new paths of commerce and adventure were opening out 



AURORA AND PHCEBUS, WITH THE HOURS. (By Guido Eeni.) 



the mediseval devotional sort, such as the " Martyrdom of St. 

 Sebastian," the "Assumption of the Virgin," and the "Death 

 of St. Peter Martyr." These are less happy, as a rule, than 

 his magnificent representations of his own Venetian contem- 

 poraries. 



new ideas in turn. England was waking up to her Elizabethan 

 revival, her poetic glories in Shakespeare and Spenser, and her 

 naval adventures under Drake and Ealeigh. Protestantism had 

 spread over all Germany and the North, and was even theii 

 engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Catholicism in Prance. 



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