The "Assumption" and "The Presentation of the Virgin" by Titian are among the invaluable treasures of the Accademia. As we gaze on the magnificent Assumption, we can but wonder, and even feel indignant, at the dense stupidity of those monks of the Frari for whom it was painted. They were like buzzing, stinging gnats about him while the work was going on, and only accepted it at last because a minister of Charles V. offered a goodly sum for it, and wished to take it away from Venice. Its only worth in their eyes depended on the fact that others wished to have it. It is really in three parts. At the top is the Eternal Father, in resplendent glory, with arms open to receive the Holy Virgin, who ascends to him surrounded by an aureole of cherubim. Below the grand, colossal figures of the Apostles are grouped. The Virgin is modest, and yet triumphant. She has no mystic expression, but is of the same healthy, vigorous race which Titian saw all about him. She might be a sister or daughter of one of {361} the bronzed apostles below. Her double mantle of red and blue, in its many folds, does not disguise the athletic grace of her superb form, in which there is neither languor nor effeminacy. In this picture, in which the climax of Venetian painting was reached,--which is by its position and arrangement in the Academy the acknowledged Queen of Pictures,--a wonderful power of invention is displayed, and a boldness of execution is shown which Titian had not before employed, and which was much criticised at the time of its completion; but it has endured the chances and changes of almost four centuries only to be placed in the first rank of existing paintings. In the "Presentation of the Virgin" we have a truly Venetian treatment of a subject which has been made of small effect in the hands of other masters. The nice little girl, with her plump face and blue gown, can have no possible conception of the meaning of her pale aureole. She is childishly innocent of what is to be done, and, in fact, has simply been used by Titian as an excuse for bringing together fifty people, an obelisk, a portico, the façade of a temple, a long flight of gray stone steps; and not content with these, he has added hillsides, mountains, and trees, with banks of clouds above all.