Perhaps the ideal portrait of Flora (1515–16), in the Pitti, Figure 266, should be reckoned with the poesies rather than with portraits. In material beauty few Titians excel it. The curded whites of the drapery vie with the flushed ivory of face and bosom. The sweetness of the impression is almost awe-inspiring. What a world it is that thrusts forth carelessly such beauty as this! Think of Giorgione’s quite similar Shepherd with the Pipe, Figure 259, and imagine again the twilight mystery with which he would have invested this apparition. Titian on the contrary thinks and feels like every man, but with an intensity and clearness quite his own. The lyrical and subjective note is incidental and superficial in him even when he most seems to resemble his lost comrade. Titian’s progress in composition is best noted in the religious pieces. From the first he seeks to break up the old inert symmetries. He invents active balances, brings the main thrusts to the sides of the pictures rather than to the centre. Thus even his Conversation Pieces gain implications of action and energy. In the altar-piece of St. Peter with Donors, at Antwerp, perhaps as early as 1502, and still somewhat in Bellini’s style, we find the enthroned figure moved to the side and the accessory figures arranged in a processional approach. The somewhat later altar-piece of St. Mark at the Salute, painted probably in 1504, Figure 267, again evades the old central symmetries. The Saint is enthroned off centre and his position gains great energy and novelty from its elevation and consequent foreshortening. The four plague saints keep the old symmetry, their types are partly from Bellini (the St. Sebastian), partly from nature. The structure in glowing shadow is that of Giorgione. We trace the same evasion of old symmetries and the same Giorgionesque fire in the Baptism of Christ, in the Capitoline at Rome, and Christ and Mary Magdalen, at London. Such pictures with their slightly conscious emphasis prepare the way for the more assured and sonorous harmonies of the great altar-backs of the ’20s. [Illustration: FIG. 267. Titian. St. Mark with Plague Saints.—_Salute._ ]