Although we have only limited space to deal with the differences of
the critics as to the probable date of Titian’s birth, we may point
out that it was, until recent times, placed in the year 1477. Mr.
Herbert Cook has, however, put forward a very strong case in favour
of the year 1489, pointing out the remarkable fact that there is no
record of Titian earlier than Dec. 2, 1511, or, according to the usual
chronology, until he was thirty-five years of age! Again, L. Dolce, in
1557, wrote that Titian was “scarcely twenty years old when Giorgione
was painting the façade of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi”; and we know that
Titian was his assistant on that work in 1507-8. Vasari also
asserts, as Mr. Cook reminds us, that the famous Venetian was “about
seventy-six years old in 1566-67,” when he visited him in Venice. No
reliance is to be placed on the date contained in the well-known letter
which Titian addressed to Philip II. in 1571, as he evidently had a
motive in referring to himself as “an old servant of ninety-five.”
There is, however, no doubt that Titian died in 1576.
[Illustration:
PLATE XI.—PALMA VECCHIO
(1480-1528)