This drawing is an early expression of the new poetic idiom in sixteenth-century Venetian painting of setting figures in bucolic landscapes, a genre that remained current into the nineteenth century. Subtly melancholic in mood and teasingly learned in meaning, the scene represents the closely intertwined, seated figures of two satyrs, who may or may not be Pan, the god of the woods and fields who lived in Arcadia, and Silvanus, another mythical creature of the woods. The disk they behold has been interpreted as an astrological reading for the years 1512 or 1513, and, alternatively, as a simple portrayal of an eclipse. The sheet can be dated about 1509–15, for it still reflects the style and subject matter of Giorgione, Titian’s master. Titian handled the inherently linear medium of pen and ink with the dazzling freedom of the brush, achieving a unified monumentality of composition that communicates great psychological power. He created magical effects of tone and an atmospheric recession of space by reinforcing contours darkly, highlighting and correcting strokes with white gouache, and breaking down volumes into component patches of ink hatching. In the background the sunlight casts stark shadows across the complex but deftly foreshortened planes of the buildings with inimitable architectonic clarity.