A "TITIAN VENUS."
A replica of the celebrated "Titian Venus" in the Florence Gallery (we believe) is exhibiting at the St. James's Gallery in Pall Mall. It is a beau- tiful picture, painted with great elaboration, and with a most powerful effect of reality. It is not a Venus, however, but a naked female reclining on a couch. Her charms are not those we attribute to the Mother of Love ; but such as might belong to a healthy little country lass, which the sun-buriit hue of the neck and the unintellectuid beauty of the face indicate the painter's model to have been. Her petite form is not of ideal perfection certainly. TITIAN, however, has made up for the absence of ideal beauty, by the extruoidinary vividness of his imitation of actual life. The picture, seen reflected in a mirror, has an effect almost illusory : the reflection lowers the warm glowing tone of the colouring to the chaste brilliancy of nature, and gives more atmosphere to the apartment. Whether this be a contemporaneous reduplication, or a later copy of the original, is not for us to say. 1Ve do not pretend to the craft of connoisseurship. It is not professed to be the original itself, we believe. Let who will have painted the picture, it is a wonderfully beautiful work of art ; and if it be not worth 5000 guineas (the price asked) to possess, it is at least worth a shilling to see.
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