[Illustration: DESIGN FOR A HOLY FAMILY. CHATSWORTH. _From a photograph by Braun, Clément & Cie_.] [Illustration: _La Vierge au Lapin. Louvre. From a Photograph by Neurdein._] In the _Madonna di S. Niccolò_, which was painted or rather finished in the succeeding year, 1523, for the little Church of S. Niccolò de' Frari, and is now in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican, the keynote is suavity, unbroken richness and harmony, virtuosity, but not extravagance of technique. The composition must have had much greater unity before the barbarous shaving off, when the picture went to Rome, of the circular top which it had in common with the _Assunta_, the Ancona, and the Pesaro altar-pieces. Technically superior to the second of these great works, it is marked by no such unity of dramatic action and sentiment, by no such passionate identification of the artist with his subject. It is only in passing from one of its beauties to another that its artistic worth can be fully appreciated. Then we admire the rapt expression, not less than the wonderfully painted vestments of the _St. Nicholas_,[46] the mansuetude of the _St. Francis_, the Venetian loveliness of the _St. Catherine_, the palpitating life of the _St. Sebastian_. The latter is not much more than a handsome, over-plump young gondolier stripped and painted as he was--contemplating, if anything, himself. The figure is just as Vasari describes it, _ritratto dal' vivo e senza artificio niuno_. The royal saint of Alexandria is a sister in refined elegance of beauty and costume, as in cunning elaboration of coiffure, to the _St. Catherine_ of the _Madonna del Coniglio_, and the not dissimilar figure in our own _Holy Family with St. Catherine_ at the National Gallery.