A small group of early portraits--all of them somewhat difficult to place--call for attention before we proceed. Probably the earliest portrait among those as yet recognised as from the hand of our painter--leaving out of the question the _Baffo_ and the portrait-figures in the great _St. Mark_ of the Salute--is the magnificent _Ariosto_ in the Earl of Darnley's Collection at Cobham Hall.[29] There is very considerable doubt, to say the least, as to whether this half-length really represents the court poet of Ferrara, but the point requires more elaborate discussion than can be here conceded to it. Thoroughly Giorgionesque is the soberly tinted yet sumptuous picture in its general arrangement, as in its general tone, and in this respect it is the fitting companion and the descendant of Giorgione's _Antonio Broccardo_ at Buda-Pesth, of his _Knight of Malta_ at the Uffizi. Its resemblance, moreover, is, as regards the general lines of the composition, a very striking one to the celebrated Sciarra _Violin-Player_ by Sebastiano del Piombo, now in the gallery of Baron Alphonse Rothschild at Paris, where it is as heretofore given to Raphael.[30] The handsome, manly head has lost both subtlety and character through some too severe process of cleaning, but Venetian art has hardly anything more magnificent to show than the costume, with the quilted sleeve of steely, blue-grey satin which occupies so prominent a place in the picture. [Illustration: _Madonna and Child, with four Saints. Dresden Gallery. From a Photograph by Hanfstängl_.]