The fourth period begins with 1548 or a little earlier, Titian’s seventieth year, and lasts nearly thirty years till his death. A looser and more synthetic construction, the substitution of broken shades and tone for frank color, a more tragic and ardent mood, a more energetic grandeur of composition, with lesser formality, are the marks of this amazing last phase, in which Titian becomes a precursor of Rembrandt and Velasquez. Since he now works chiefly for the Hapsburgs, the great examples are at Madrid and Vienna. [Illustration: FIG. 263. Titian. The Tribute Money.—_Dresden._ ] The earliest Titians show the sultry shadows of Giorgione, and are distinguishable from his work only by a more linear quality, and by a greater explicitness of mood. Titian’s poetry is direct and rarely ambiguous. What ardors of flesh and spirit are suggested in his early portraits of men! The portrait of a bearded man in London, Figure 261, is conceived entirely in Giorgione’s fashion, as a short bust showing the hands, and the mysterious envelopment in warm shadow is Giorgione’s as is the sensitiveness of touch and characterization. But with all his gentle beauty, the man is formidable. His aloofness is no revery, but some preparation of will for action. Again Giorgione would hardly have labored to suggest the material splendor of the silvery satin sleeve. Even more perfect is the half-length of a young patrician at Temple Newsham, Figure 262, England. It is full of a reserved poetry, yet the effect is as well almost shrewd and diplomatic. This youth has the Venetian capacity for both passion and affairs. Both these portraits should be a little earlier than 1510. Such masterpieces of smouldering ardor as the Knight of Malta, erroneously ascribed to Giorgione and the Man with a Glove, at Paris, must be a little later. In concentration these are as fine as Giorgione’s portraits, but quite a different spirit transpires from the investing shadows. These men of Titian are no day-dreamers, but resolute and purposeful. They live little in memory and much in prospect. Their imagination implies action and possession. Even the drawing is more resolute. Study the eye sockets, temples, and cheek bones of these early Titians. Nowhere in Giorgione do you get such a sense of inner bony structure, of thicker and thinner cushions of flesh, of tenser or slacker skin. The method finds its most admirable expression in the two marvellous heads of the Tribute Money (1514–5), at Dresden, Figure 263. Yet how little mystery or pathos is invoked. With a gesture and an expression of exquisite consideration and breeding, the Saviour baffles the most eager and fanatical of inquisitors. Nothing could be more unlike the abstracted and almost morose Christs of Giorgione. As usual, Titian stands on the ground of the finest worldliness, as the Greeks had done. With the supernal, whether in heaven or Arcadia, he has little concern. [Illustration: