Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/361

 ing by the master of himself, done in red chalk: the beautiful grave face, sweet and strong, full of grace and thought, is hard to mistake or to forget.

The designs of Carpaccio recall not less than these the painter's habit of mind and work. By him there is a drawing of two brothers, one with sword by side and wearing deep boots, one clothed in a full civic gown with round balls hanging down it by way of fringe, both with spurs on their heels. One design may be a sketch for his Presentation of the Virgin: here in the Piazzetta of Venice a priest receives a kneeling girl. There are sketches besides of hags, of priests and nuns; a dog-headed chimæra with a fragment of sword stuck in its neck, the knight about to despatch it with the haft; a crowd with horses and trumpets filling the Piazza of St. Mark, here altered in proportions, but not the less recognisable; studies of full-sleeved arms and hands—one bearing keys, one a book, one an apple, and so forth—studiously wrought and varied; a head that might well serve for Shylock's, the typical Jew of Venice, with a face of keen and vigorous cruelty; a reading priest, with broad beard shaped like an open fan.

But the designs of Titian and Giorgione are more precious and wonderful than these. From his sketches alone it might be evident that Titian was the chief of all landscape painters. The priceless samples of his work here exhibited demand long and loving study from those who desire to estimate them aright. They are fresher than the merest suggestions, more perfect than the most finished elaborations of other men. It is not by intellectual weight or imaginative significance that these