Fatal Companion

Italians and French had much in common. They loved coffee, painting, and playing accordions in the streets. Yet they were natural rivals, just like Caffè Florian and the Officers' Café, even though they sold the same things.

The Officers' Café was far less famous than Caffè Florian, and its prices were correspondingly lower. Before the unstoppable Caffè Florian, the Officers' Café often had to yield. For the Officers' Café, the humiliations were too numerous to recount: whenever the damp, gloomy Caffè Florian received sunlight in the afternoon, the Officers' Café had to graciously step aside and "send" over the guests who had been sunning themselves at its outdoor tables.

Many of the paintings exhibited in the Louvre had not been "given" by Italians. Its crown jewel, the "Mona Lisa," had been seized from Italy by Napoleon, and was said to have once been displayed in Napoleon's bedroom for his daily admiration.

Venice also had a museum similar to the Louvre, housing Venetian painting treasures from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. It stood beside the Grand Canal and was Venice's most outstanding Gothic building.

The Golden Roof was a landmark of Innsbruck, Austria. Built in 1500 by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, it was decorated with 2,657 gilded copper tiles. Venice's "Golden Palace" was built in 1440, but it was far less famous than Innsbruck and the Louvre.

Titian's paintings were now scattered across Europe. He had been classmates with Giorgione, yet he had lived as long as Michelangelo. Titian's works were unlike Giorgione's lyrical tranquility; they were magnificent, passionate, and imaginative, with intense colors and bold brushwork, emphasizing worldly joy and sensual pleasure.

One of his representative works

"Sacred and Profane Love" was now housed in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, Italy. The two women in the painting, symbolizing