Note (return) — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Titian painted, and painted wonderfully, to the very last. He was eighty-one when he painted the 'Martyrdom of St Lawrence,' one of his largest and grandest compositions, and in the last year of his life he painted—leaving it not quite completed,—a 'Pietà;' showing that his hand owned the weight of years, 16 but the conception of the subject is still animated and striking, the colours still glowing; while, Titian-like, the light still flows around the mighty group in every gradation of tone.