“For her own person. It beggar’d all description: she did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue, O’er-picturing that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did.” Or, even when sportively, in _Twelfth Night_, act i. sc. 5, lines 214–230, vol. iii. p. 240, Olivia replies to Viola’s request, “Good Madam, let me see your face,”—is it not quite in an artist’s or an amateur’s style that the answer is given? “We will draw the curtain and show you the picture. Look you, sir, such a one I was this present: is’t not well done?” [_Unveiling_. “_Viol._ Excellently done, if God did all. _Oli._ ’Tis in grain, sir; ’twill endure wind and weather. _Vio._ ’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on: Lady, you are the cruel’st she alive, If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy. _Oli._ O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labelled to my will: as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth.” But from certain lines in the _Taming of the Shrew_ (Induction, sc. 2, lines 47–58), it is evident that Shakespeare had seen either some of the mythological pictures by Titian, or engravings from them, or from similar subjects. Born in 1477, and dying in 1576, in his ninety-ninth year, the great Italian artist was contemporary with a long series of illustrious men, and his fame and works had shone far beyond their native sky. Our distant and then but partially civilised England awoke to a perception of their beauties, and though few—if any—of Titian’s paintings so early found a domicile in this country, yet pictures were, we are assured,[71] “a frequent decoration in the rooms of the wealthy.” Shakespeare even represents the Countess of Auvergne, _1 Henry VI._, act ii. sc. 3, lines 36, 37, vol. v. p. 33, as saying to Talbot,— “Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me, For in my gallery thy picture hangs.” The formation of a royal gallery, or collection of paintings, had engaged the care of Henry VIII.; and the British nobility at the time of his daughter Elizabeth’s reign, “deeply read in classical learning, familiar with the literature of Italy, and polished by foreign travel,” “were well qualified to appreciate and cultivate the true principles of taste.”