The patronage of courts had by this time altered the tenor of Titian's life. In 1516 Duke Alfonso d'Este had invited him to Ferrara, where he had finished Bellini's "Bacchanals." It bears the marks of Titian's hand, and he has introduced a well-known point of view at Cadore into the background. In 1518 Alfonso writes to propose another painting, and Titian's acceptance is contained in a very courtier-like letter, in which we divine a touch of irony. "The more I thought of it," he ends, "the more I became convinced that the greatness of art among the ancients was due to the assistance they received from great princes, who were content to leave to the painter the credit and renown derived from their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures." Alfonso's requirements for his new castle were frankly pagan. Mythological scenes were already popular. Mantegna had adorned Isabela d'Este's "Paradiso" with revels of the gods, Botticelli had given his conception of classic myth in the Medici villa, already Bellini had essayed a Bacchanal, and Titian was to make designs for similar scenes to complete the decorations of the halls of Este. The same exuberant feeling he shows in the "Assumption" finds utterance in the "Garden of Loves" and the "Bacchanals," both painted for Alfonso of Ferrara. The children in the former may be compared with the angels in the "Assumption." Their blue wings match the heavenly blue sky, and they are painted with the most delicate finish. We can imagine the beauty of the great hall at Ferrara when hung with this brilliant series, which was completed in 1523 by the "Bacchus and Ariadne" of the National Gallery. The whole company of bacchanals is given up to wanton merrymaking. Above them broods the deep blue sky and great white clouds of a summer day. The deep greens of the foliage throw the creamy-white and burning colour of the draperies and the fair forms of the nymphs into glowing relief, while by a convention the satyrs are of a deep, tawny complexion. On a roll of music is stamped the rollicking device, "_Chi boit et ne reboit, ne sçeais que boir soit_." The purple fruit hangs ripened from the vines, its crimson juice shines like a jewel in crystal goblets and drips in streams over rosy limbs. The influence of such pictures as these was absorbed by Rubens, but though they hardly surpass him in colour, they are more idyllic and less coarse. The perfect taste of the Renaissance is never shown more victoriously than here, where indulgence ceases to be repulsive, and the actors are real flesh and blood, yet more Arcadian than revolting. In the "Bacchus and Ariadne," Titian gives triumphant expression to a mood of wild rejoicing, so gay, so good-tempered, so simple, that we must smile in sympathy. The conqueror flinging himself from his golden chariot drawn by panthers, his deep red mantle fluttering on high, is so full of reckless life that our spirit bounds with him. His rioting band,