[Illustration: FIG. 274. Titian. Venus of Urbino.—_Pitti._ ] About the same time he did the official portraits of Eleonora and Federigo Gonzaga. He treats them as grandees. They are imposing, almost pompous, every inch the prince and princess. He sees with a courtier’s eye, and gives to official portraiture that impersonal cast which it has since only too faithfully retained. He revives the great traditions of Venetian narrative painting. The great wall painting, in the Ducal Palace, of the Imperial Victory at Cadore has perished. Old copies and engravings tell us of its energy, picturesqueness and panoramic breadth. Fortunately the great mural canvas, finished in 1538 and representing Mary entering the Temple, is still in its place; for the old School of the Carità has become the Academy. In this picture Titian realizes all that the Veronese and Venetian painters from Altichiero down had sought for. Like his predecessors, he is chiefly spectacular, subordinating character, but he attains a monumental breadth which they never remotely glimpsed. The scheme is worked out in magnificent oblongs varied by triangular forms which repeat the motive of the steps. The chief narrative motives, the childish determination of the Virgin, the gracious expectancy of the high priest, the admiration of the women below, hold their own amazingly in the vast space. The surface sings with color. The painting was affixed to the wall in 1538, fully ten years before Paolo Veronese had made this sort of pageantry his special domain. Almost as dispassionate is the great canvas, depicting Christ before the People (1543), at Vienna. It becomes less an expression of the submission of Christ than an exaltation of the Imperial power that has him in charge and of the mob spirit that cries for his blood. The architectural surroundings are magnificent. There are wonderful details, as in the howling boy at the left and the white form of a girl caught in the throng. Her sudden apparition as an element of relief and mystery anticipates by nearly a century a similar device in Rembrandt’s Night Watch. Very characteristic in its patrician decorum is The Disciples at Emmaus, in the Louvre, Figure 275, which was painted about 1545. Here there is no intensity in the moment of surprise and revelation. Benignly the Christ breaks bread; reverently and without excitement the disciples give him his due worship. All the homeliness and surprise that are in St. Luke’s narrative, and that Rembrandt later emphasized, have been leveled out in the interest of discretion and nobility. The disciples show no more enthusiasm than a Venetian dignitary and prelate should. [Illustration: FIG. 275. The Supper at Emmaus.—_Louvre._ ]