Titian was now seventy-nine years of age, honored and loved by many countries. While his life had been one of almost unceasing labor, he had found time to receive at Casa Grande, poets and artists, dukes and kings, at his delightful garden-parties. Henry III. of France came to see him, and received as a gift any pictures in the studio of which he asked the price. When Cardinal Granvelle and Pacheco came to dine at Casa Grande, Titian flung a purse to his steward, and bade him prepare a feast, since "all the world was dining with him." Titian attached to himself a few most devoted friends: Aretino, a writer, who had many faults, but must have had some virtues to have been loved by Titian for thirty years; Sansovino, an architect; Speroni, a philosopher, and a few others who met frequently for cultured conversation and good-fellowship at Casa Grande. It is said by historians that at some of these garden parties the still beautiful Violante was to be seen among the distinguished guests. Had she been married to another, all these years? or was the old affection renewed in these latter days? In 1556 Aretino died, and Titian deeply lamented the man who had been an almost inseparable companion; three years later his beloved brother, Francesco, died at Cadore, and two years after this his beautiful daughter Lavinia, leaving six little children. Still the man past eighty painted on: "The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," now in the Jesuits' Church at Venice, and "Christ Crowned with Thorns," now in the Louvre, where, "with undeniable originality, he almost attained to a grandeur of composition and bold creativeness equal to those of Buonarotti, whilst he added to his creations that which was essentially his own--the magic play of tints and lights and shadows which mark the true Venetian craftsman." At eighty-two he painted for Philip II. "Diana and Calisto," "Diana and Actæon," and "The Entombment of Christ." The Dianas are now in the Bridgewater collection at London, for which they were purchased for twelve thousand five hundred dollars. "Titian," says Crowe, "was never more thoroughly master of the secrets of the human framework than now that he was aged. Never did he less require the model. What his mind suggested issued from his hand as Minerva issued from the brain of Jove. His power was the outcome of years of experience, which made every stroke of his brush both sure and telling.... But the field of the earlier time, take it all in all, is sweeter and of better savor than that of the later period. Rich, exuberant, and bright the works of the master always were; but there is something mysterious and unfathomable in the brightness and sweetness of his prime which far exceeds in charm the cleverness of his old age."