The Madonnas and Conversation pieces again show us most vividly how his taste is working. The Gipsy Madonna, Figure 268, at Vienna, painted about 1505, is highly Giorgionesque, but Giorgione never painted such sculptural forms, nor ever conceived so resolute a Christchild. Even the throwing of the outlet to one side reveals Titian. At Madrid and Vienna are superb half-length Madonnas arranged symmetrically after Bellini’s fashion, but with greater freedom of pose. Titian soon saw that the old compositional forms could not express the new energy. He makes repeated experiments, shifts the Madonna to one side, as in the unfinished Madonna with St. Anthony at Florence. He adds figures and rearranges them until the Conversation piece becomes an audience, with the saints and donors approaching the Madonna, as in an Adoration of the Magi. We find the completed form in the admirable Conversation piece, of about 1510 with its two versions in the Louvre and at Vienna, Figure 269; and considerably later, a further development in those numerous full-length Holy Families in landscapes of which the Madonna of the Hare (1530), Figure 270, and The Marriage of St. Catherine, at London, are consummate types. And with all the conscious experimentalism of this work, the sense of character and of beauty is unperturbed. As compared with the contemporary Holy Families of Raphael, the accent is more individual and local. These superb Madonnas and gracious female saints with attendant martyrs and church doctors, are merely the lads and lasses of Carpaccio’s legends, grown up to manhood and womanhood, increased in dignity and sweetness. [Illustration: FIG. 268. Titian. Gipsy Madonna.—_Vienna._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 269. Titian. Madonna with Saints.—_Vienna._ ]