With what feelings, one wonders, did Titian approach what he knew was his last work?
He painted it in 1576, when he was either ninety-nine or eighty-nine; he died in the same year.

To me it is one of his most beautiful things: not perhaps at first, but after one has returned to it again and again, and then for ever.

It has a quality that his earlier works lack, both of simplicity and pathos.

The very weakness of the picture engages and convinces..