little less sunny. He had the sense to see that Giorgione had expanded the old rule and done something worth adopting, and for a time he simply followed this joyful outburst. His early years fell at a time when life was glowing, radiant, almost intoxicating in its vigour. But youth and joy cannot last; nor could the Renaissance spirit. Gradually the trouble and the strife from which the whole of Italy was suffering filtered into Venice, and cast a serious aspect over art and social life. Venice, of all the states in Italy, was the last to feel this sobering influence. She had been defeated both in battle and in commerce; and, although she was not totally crushed under the heel of Spain, life was not the endless holiday it promised to be. Men took themselves more seriously, and the quieter pleasures of friendship and affection began to be more sought after. Religion revived in importance. Men clung to it, as they always do in time of trouble, for comfort and support. It was no longer a political sentiment, but a personal one. Art declined as the sunshine and the gaiety that had fed and nourished it ebbed away. When men began to feel that individually they were of no avail, that they were subject to the powers round about and above them, the death-blow of great art fell. Titian was influenced by his environment, and his painting changed completely. He produced pictures that would have been looked upon with scorn in his earlier days. The faces of his men are no longer smooth and free from care. One saw there struggle and suffering, and all that life had done for them. But Titian was not a pessimist at heart. The joy and gaiety in which he had been brought up formed part of his character. Whatever changes may have happened to his country politically, nothing could alter that entirely. And it was no doubt this early training and the atmosphere in which he was brought up that made his pictures the masterpieces they were. You notice the men who came after Titian--how they began to decline. For example, Lorenzo Lotto had been brought up in the heyday of the Renaissance; but the new order of things, the change from national virility to national decadence, enfeebled him. Then, again, the coming in touch with poets and men of letters, victims flying from the fury of Spain, was a new stimulant to art. It did not exactly improve it; but it certainly changed it. [Illustration: THE ORANGE SAIL]