The effect of this work, when it drew such a stream of eulogy from lips else so frugal in Venetian praise, may be guessed at from the impression it makes in its present decay--for even now, it might defy the competition of the most terrific specimens in chiaroscuro, the boat of Charon in M. Angelo's Last Judgment, perhaps, only excepted. Yet its master was defrauded of its glory by his panegyrist, whilst it was exciting the wonder and curiosity of every beholder: Lanzi is the only historian who notices its remains, and the real author;[94] we look in vain for it in Ridolfi, who in his Life of Giorgione treats us instead of it with a delectable account of a night-piece which he painted, exhibiting the tragi-comedy of castrating a cat. It has been treated as a mistake to confine the chiaroscuro of a subject exclusively to one source; nor can it be doubted that often it is and has been proved to be both necessary and advantageous to admit more; this is however a licence to be granted with considerable caution, and it appears to be the privilege of superior powers to raise a subject, by the admission of subordinate, sometimes diverging, sometimes opposite streams of light, to assist and invigorate the effect of the primary one, without impairing that unity which alone can ensure a breadth to effect, without which each part, for mastery striving, soon would be lost in confusion, or crumble into fragments. The best instances of the advantages gained by the superinduction of artificial light, appear to be the Pietro Martire and the S. Lorenzo of Tiziano: if selection can be made from the works of a master, where to count is to choose. In the first, the stern light of evening far advanced in the background, is commanded by the celestial emanation bursting from above, wrapping the summit in splendour, and diffusing itself in rays more or less devious over the scenery. The subject of S. Lorenzo, a nocturnal scene, admits light from two sources--the fire beneath the Saint, and a raised torch: but receives its principal splendour from the aërial reflex of the vision on high, which sheds its mitigating ray on the martyr.