FIG. 273. Titian. The Entombment.—_Louvre._ ] Passing to the religious pictures once more, the Entombment, Figure 273, now in the Louvre, which was painted for the Gonzagas about 1525, is again a masterpiece of unaffected feeling and of finest disposition of masses. The central group looms against the sky with the grandeur of a great dome. Whoever has seen strong men caring for the dead or stricken will realize the reserve and nobility of acts which are expressions of sympathies too deep for words. I saw things like that at the Messina earthquake. Equally fine and restrained is the protective attitude of the Magdalen towards a Mary stark and mute with grief. Magnificent is the contrast of the grand nude forms of the dead Christ, with the rich stuffs in which the attendants are clothed. I imagine when Titian conceived this simple elegy with such power and pathos he may have had scornful reference to Raphael’s distorted and sensational version of the same theme, Figure 186. And perhaps the æsthetic lesson of the picture is that choice feeling is far more difficult of attainment than fine painting. In 1533, Titian, by command, met the Emperor Charles V at Augsburg, was promptly made a knight and later a count palatine. From now on he was much employed by the Emperor and his son Philip. With that relationship a change begins to come over his art. He becomes less exuberant, more official and objective. Titian at sixty has said almost every possible thing on his own account, and is content for a space to be observer and recorder of the stately world about him. We have descriptions of him at this time, maintaining a princely hospitality in his palace, and declining to share the dissipations which he willingly provided for such loose-living friends as Francesco Sansovino and Pietro Aretino. He strangely depoetizes himself. The change comes somewhere about 1536, and a notable evidence of it is in the portrait of a lady in peacock blue velvet, in the Pitti. Posterity has agreed to call her simply La Bella, and so impersonal a style well befits her impassive beauty. Materially Titian has never painted more exquisitely, but it has become a painting of surfaces. The appeal is vague, general, social, there are no personal intimations, merely a magnificent statement of entirely obvious perfections. Again Titian is content to be the mere painter in the so-called Venus of Urbino, Figure 274. It was painted about 1538, and is in the Uffizi. Evidently the sleeping Venus of Giorgione is in Titian’s mind, but what a loss in awaking her! Titian sees the gracious forms for what they are of nacreous light and rosy shadow, he sees the room for what it is in distribution of curtained interior and alcove space irradiated by morning light. He studies curiously the delicate nuances of bluer sheet and creamier skin, he models out the slender body with faintest investment of almost imperceptible shadow. In short, he is just a painter, but what a painter he is!