Of the Uffizi "Venus," Crowe and Cavalcaselle say, "What the painter achieves, and no other master of the age achieves with equal success, is the representation of a beauteous living being, whose fair and polished skin is depicted with enamelled gloss, and yet with every shade of modulation which a delicate flesh comports: flesh not marbled or cold, but sweetly toned, and mantling with life's blood, flesh that seems to heave and rise and fall with every breath. Perfect distribution of space, a full and ringing harmony of tints, atmosphere both warm and mellow, are all combined in such wise as to bring us in contact with something that is real; and we feel, as we look into the canvas, that we might walk into that apartment and find room to wander in the gray twilight into which it is thrown by the summer sky that shows through the coupled windows." At the feet of Venus a little dog lies curled up on the couch. In the Venus of Madrid, she pats the back of a dog, while her lover plays an organ at the foot of the couch. It is interesting to learn how Titian produced such effects by his brush. Says Palma Giovine, "Titian prepared his pictures with a solid stratum of pigment, which served as a bed or fundament, upon which to return frequently. Some of these preparations were made with resolute strokes of a brush heavily laden with color, the half-tints struck in with pure red earth, the lights with white, modelled into relief by touches of the same brush dipped into red, black, and yellow. In this way he would give the promise of a figure in four strokes. After laying this foundation, he would turn the picture to the wall, and leave it there perhaps for months, turning it round again after a time, to look at it carefully, and scan the parts as he would the face of his greatest enemy.