[41] It appears to the writer that this masterpiece of colour and reposeful charm, with its wonderful gleams of orange, pale turquoise, red, blue, and golden white, with its early signature, "Ticianus F.," should be placed not later than this period. Crowe and Cavalcaselle assign it to the year 1530, and hold it to be the _Madonna with St. Catherine_, mentioned in a letter of that year written by Giacomo Malatesta to Federigo Gonzaga at Mantua. Should not this last picture be more properly identified with our own superb _Madonna and Child with St. John and St. Catherine_, No. 635 in the National Gallery, the style of which, notwithstanding the rather Giorgionesque type of the girlish Virgin, shows further advance in a more sweeping breadth and a larger generalisation? The latter, as has already been noted, is signed "Tician." [42] "Tizian und Alfons von Este," _Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen_, Fünfzehnter Band, II. Heft, 1894. [43] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life and Times of Titian_, vol. i. pp. 237-240. [44] On the circular base of the column upon which the warrior-saint rests his foot is the signature "Ticianus faciebat MDXXII." This, taken in conjunction with the signature "Titianus" on the Ancona altar-piece painted in 1520, tends to show that the line of demarcation between the two signatures cannot be absolutely fixed. [45] Lord Wemyss possesses a repetition, probably from Titian's workshop, of the _St. Sebastian_, slightly smaller than the Brescia original. This cannot have been the picture catalogued by Vanderdoort as among Charles I.'s treasures, since the latter, like the earliest version of the _St. Sebastian_, preceding the definitive work, showed the saint tied not to a tree, but to a column, and in it the group of St. Roch and the Angel was replaced by the figures of two archers shooting. [46] Ridolfi, followed in this particular by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, sees in the upturned face of the _St. Nicholas_ a reflection of that of Laocoon in the Vatican group. [47] It passed with the rest of the Mantua pictures into the collection of Charles I., and was after his execution sold by the Commonwealth to the banker and dealer Jabach for £120. By the latter it was made over to Louis XIV., together with many other masterpieces acquired in the same way. [48] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _Life and Times of Titian_, vol. i. pp. 298, 299. [49] The victory over the Turks here commemorated was won by Baffo in the service of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI., some twenty-three years before. This gives a special significance to the position in the picture of St. Peter, who, with the keys at his feet, stands midway between the Bishop and the Virgin. We have seen Baffo in one of Titian's earliest works (_circa_ 1503) recommended to St. Peter by Alexander VI. just before his departure for this same expedition.