THE DATE OF TITIAN'S BIRTH

"Most potent and invincible King,—I think your Majesty will have received by this the picture of 'Lucretia and Tarquin' which was to have been presented by the Venetian Ambassador. I now come with these lines to ask your Majesty to deign to command that I should be informed as to what pleasure it has given. The calamities of the present times, in which every one is suffering from the continuance of war, force me to this step, and oblige me at the same time to ask to be favoured with some kind proof of your Majesty's grace, as well as with some assistance from Spain or elsewhere, since I have not been able for years past to obtain any payment either from the Naples grant, or from my ordinarypension. The state of my affairs is indeed such that I do not know how to live in this my old age, devoted as it entirely is to the service of your Catholic Majesty, and to no other. Not having for eighteen years past received aquattrinofor the paintings which I delivered from time to time, and of which I forward a list by this opportunity to the secretary Perez, I feel assured that your Majesty's infinite clemency will cause a careful consideration to be made of the services of an old servant of the age of ninety-five, by extending to him some evidence of munificence and liberality. Sending two prints of the design of the Beato Lorenzo, and most humbly recommending myself,"I am Your Catholic Majesty's"most devoted, humble servant,"TITIANO VECELLIO."From Venice, the 1st of August, 1571."

"I am Your Catholic Majesty's

"most devoted, humble servant,

"TITIANO VECELLIO.

"From Venice, the 1st of August, 1571."

Here, then, is Titian himself, in the year 1571, declaring that he is ninety-five years of age—in other words, dating his birth back to 1476—that is, some thirteen years earlier than Dolce and Vasari imply was the case. A flagrant discrepancy of evidence! In similar strain he thus addresses the king again five years later:[159]

"Your Catholic and Royal Majesty,—The infinite benignity with which your Catholic Majesty—by natural habit—is accustomed to gratify all such as have served and still serve your Majesty faithfully, enboldens me to appear with the present (letter) to recall myself to your royal memory, in which I believe that my old and devoted service will have kept me unaltered. My prayer is this: twenty years have elapsed and I have never had any recompense for the many pictures sent on divers occasions to your Majesty; but having received intelligence from the Secretary Antonio Perez of your Majesty's wish to gratify me, and having reached a great old age not without privations, I now humbly beg that your Majesty will deign, with accustomed benevolence, to give such directions to ministers as will relieve my want. The glorious memory of Charles the Fifth, your Majesty's father, having numbered me amongst his familiar, nay, most faithful servants,by honouring me beyond my deserts with the title ofcavaliere, I wish to be able, with the favour and protection of your Majesty—true portrait of that immortal emperor—to support as it deserves the name of a cavaliere, which is so honoured and esteemed in the world; and that it may be known that the services done by me during many years to the most serene house of Austria have met with grateful return, to spend what remains of my days in the service of your Majesty. For this I should feel the more obliged, as I should thus be consoled in my old age, whilst praying to God to concede to your Majesty a long and happy life with increase of his divine grace and exaltation of your Majesty's Kingdom. In the meanwhile I expect from the royal benevolence of your Majesty the fruits of the favour I desire, with due reverence and humility, and kissing your sacred hands,"I am Your Catholic Majesty's"most humble and devoted servant,"TITIANO VECELLIO."From Venice, the 27th of February, 1576."

"I am Your Catholic Majesty's

"most humble and devoted servant,

"TITIANO VECELLIO.

"From Venice, the 27th of February, 1576."

This is the last letter we have of Titian, who died in August of this year, according to his own showing, in his hundredth year.

Now what reliance can be placed on this statement? On the one hand, we have the evidence of two independent writers, Dolce and Vasari, both personally acquainted with Titian, and both agreeing by inference that the date of his birth was about 1489. Both had ample opportunity to get at the truth, and Vasari is particularly explicit in recording the exact date when he visited Titian in Venice and the age the painter had then reached. Yet five years later Titian is found stating that he is ninety-five, and not eighty-two as we should expect! Perhaps the best comment is made by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who significantly remark immediately after the last letter: "Titian's appeal to the benevolence of the King of Spain looks like that of a garrulous old gentleman proud of his longevity, but hoping still to live for many years."[160]Exactly! The occasion could well be improved by a little timelyexaggeration well calculated to appeal to the sympathies and "infinite benignity" of the monarch, and if, when the writer had actually reached the respectable age of eighty-two, he wrote himself down as ninety-five, who would gainsay him? It added point to his appeal—that was the chief thing—and as to accuracy, well, Titian was not the man to be over-scrupulous when his own interests were involved. But even though the statement were not deliberately made to heighten the effect of an appeal, we must in any case make allowances for the natural proneness to exaggerate their age which usually characterises men of advanced years, so that anyex partestatement of this kind must be received with due caution. Where, moreover, as in the present case, we have evidence of a directly contradictory kind furnished by independent witnesses, whose declarations in this respect are presumably disinterested, suchex partestatements are on the face of them unreliable. The balance of evidence in this case appears to rest on the side of the older historians, Dolce and Vasari, whose statements, as I hold, are in the circumstances more reliable than the picturesque exaggeration of a man of advanced years.

I claim, therefore, that any account of Titian's life based solely on such flimsy evidence as to his age as is found in this letter to Philip the Second is, to say the least, open to grave doubt. The whole superstructure raised by modern writers on this uncertain foundation is full of flaws and incongruities, and I am fully persuaded the future historian will have to beginde novoin any attempt at a chronological reconstruction of Titian's career. The gap of thirty-five years down to 1511 may prove after all less by twelve or thirteen years than people think, so that the young Titian naturally enough first emerges into view at the age of twenty-two and not thirty-five.

But we must not anticipate results, for there is still the evidence of the later writers of the seventeenth century to consider. Two of these declare that Titian was born in 1477. The first of these, Tizianello, a collateral descendant of thegreat painter, published his littleCompendioin 1622, wherein he gives a sketchy and imperfect biography; the other, Ridolfi, repeats the date in hisMeraviglie dell' Arte, published in 1648. The latter writer is notoriously unreliable in other respects, and it is quite likely this is merely an instance of copying from Tizianello, whose unsupported statement is chiefly of value as showing that the "centenarian" theory had started within fifty years of Titian's death. But again we ask: Why should the evidence of a seventeenth-century writer be preferred to the personal testimony of those who actually knew Titian himself, especially when Vasari gives us precise information with which Dolce's independent account is in perfect agreement? No doubt the great age to which Titian certainly attained was exaggerated in the next generation after his death, but it is a remarkable fact that the contemporary eulogies, mostly in poetic form, which appeared on the occasion of his decease, do not allude to any such phenomenal longevity.[161]

Nevertheless, Ridolfi's statement that Titian was born in 1477 is commonly quoted as if there were no better and earlier evidence in existence, and, indeed, it is a matter of surprise that conscientious modern biographers have not looked more carefully at the original authorities instead of being content to follow tradition, and I must earnestly plead for a reconsideration of the question of Titian's age by the future historians of Venetian painting.[162]

If, as I believe, Titian was born in or about 1489 instead of 1476-7, it follows that he must have been Giorgione's junior by at least twelve years—a most important deduction—and it also follows that he cannot have produced any work of consequence before, say, 1505, at the age of sixteen, and he will have died at eighty-seven and not in his hundredth year. The alteration in date would help to explain the silence of all records about him before 1511, when he would have been only twenty-two and not thirty-five years old; it would fully account for his name not being mentioned by Dürer in his famous letter of 1506, wherein he refers to the painters of Venice, and it would equally account for the absence of his name from the commission to paint the Fondaco frescoes in 1507-8, for he would have been employed simply as Giorgione's young assistant. The fact that in 1511 he signs himself simply "Io tician di Cador Dpñtore" and notMaestrowould be more intelligible in a young man of twenty-two than in an accomplished master of thirty-five, and the character of his letter addressed to the Senate in 1513 would be more natural to an ambitious aspirant of twenty-four than to a man in his maturity of thirty-seven.[163]

Such are some of the obvious results of a change of date, but the larger question as to the development of Titian's art must be left to the future historian, for the importance of fixing a date lies in the application thereof.[164]HERBERT COOK.

Reply by Dr. Georg Gronau. Translated from the "Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft," vol. xxiv., 6th part

In the January number of theNineteenth Centuryappears an article by Herbert Cook under the title, "Did Titian live to be Ninety-Nine Years Old?" The interrogation already suggests that the author comes to a negative conclusion. It is, perhaps, not without interest to set forth the reasons advanced by the English connoisseur and to submit them to adverse criticism.

(Here follows an abstract of the article.)

The reasoning, as will have been seen, is not altogether free from doubt. It has been usual hitherto in historical investigations to call in question the assertions of a man about his own life only when thoroughly weighty reasons justified such a course. Is the evidence of a Dolce and of a Vasari so free from all objection that it outweighs Titian's personal statement? Before answering this question it should be pointed out that we possess two further statements of contemporary writers on the subject of Titian's age, statements which have escaped the notice of Mr. Cook. One is to be found in a letter from the Spanish Consul in Venice, Thomas de Cornoga, to Philip II., dated 8th December 1567 (published in the very important work by Zarco del Valle[165]). After informing the king of Titian's usual requests on the subject of his pension, and so on, he continues: "y con los 85 annos de su edad servira à V.M. hasta la muerte."

Somewhere, then, in the very year in which Titian, according to Vasari, was "above seventy-six years of age," he seemsto have been eighty-five, according to the report of another and quite independent witness, and if so, he would have been born about 1482.

We have then three definite statements:

This new information, instead of helping us, only serves to make still greater confusion.

The other piece of evidence not mentioned by Mr. Cook was written only a few years after Titian's death. Borghini says in hisRiposo, 1584: "Mori ultimamente di vecchiezza (!not, then, of the plague?), essendo d'età d'anni 98 o 99, l'anno 1576." ... This is the first time that the traditional statement as to the master's age appears in literature. In this state of things it is worth while to look closer into the evidence of Dolce and Vasari to see if they are not after all the most trustworthy witnesses.

It is always held to be a mistake to take rather vague statements quite literally, as Mr. Cook has done, and to build thereon further conclusions. When Dolce says that Titian painted with Giorgione at the Fondaco, "non avendo egli allora appena venti anni," he is only trying to make out that his hero, here as everywhere, was a most unusual person (the whole dialogue is a glorification of the master). For the same reason he makes the following remark, which we can absolutely prove to be false:—the Assumption (he says) "fu la prima opera pubblica, che a olio facesse." Now at least one work of Titian's was, then, already to be seen in a public place—viz. the "St. Mark Enthroned, with Four Saints," in Santo Spirito, afterwards removed to the sacristy of the Salute. In other points, too, Dolce can be convicted of small errors and misrepresentations, partly on literary grounds, partly due to his desire to enhance the praise of Titian.

Vasari, again, should only be cited as witness when he speaks of works of art which he has actually seen. In such a case, apart from slips, he is always a trustworthy guide. Directly, however, he goes into biographical details or questions of chronology accuracy becomes nearly always a secondary matter. Titian's biography offers an excellent and most instructive example of this. Vasari mentions first the birth and upbringing of the boy, then he speaks of Giorgione and the Fondaco frescoes, and goes on: "dopo la quale opera fece un quadro grande che oggi è nella salla di messer Andrea Loredano.... Dopo in casa di messer Giovanni D'Anna ... fece il suo ritratto ...; ed un quadro di Ecce Homo, ..." and he goes on, "L'anno poi 1507...." If it had not been that one of these pictures, once in the possession of Giovanni D'Anna, had been preserved (now in the Vienna Gallery), and that it bears in a conspicuous place the date 1543, it would be recorded in all biographies of Titian that he painted in 1507 an "Ecce Homo" for this Giovanni D'Anna.

If one goes further into Vasari's account we read that Titian published his "Triumph of Faith" in 1508. "Dopo condottosi Tiziano a Vicenza, dipinse a fresco sotto la loggetta ... il giudizio di Salamone. Appresso tomato a Venezia, dipinse la facciata de' Grimani; e in Padoa nella chiesa di Sant' Antonio alcune storie ... de fatti di quel santo: e in quella di Santo Spirito fece ... un San Marco a sedere in mezzo a certi Santi." We now know on documentary evidence that the Vicenza fresco (which was destroyed later) dated from 1521, and similarly that the frescoes at Padua were painted in 1511, whilst the date of the S. Mark picture may be fixed with probability at 1504.

These examples prove how inexact Vasari is here once more. But it may be objected, supposing that he is inaccurate in statements which refer back, can he not be in the right in a case where he comes back, so to speak, straight fromvisiting Titian and writes down his observation about the master's actual age? To be sure; but when we find that so many other similar notices of Vasari are wrong, even those that refer to people whom he personally knew, we lose faith altogether. In turning over the leaves of the sixth volume of the Sansoni edition of Vasari, in which only his contemporaries, some of them closely connected, too, with him, are spoken of, we find the following incorrect statements:—

P. 99. Tribolo was 65 years old (in reality only 50).P. 209. Bugiardini died at 75 (really 79).P. 288. Pontormo at 65 (he died actually in his 63rd year).P. 564. Giovanni da Udine at 70 (really 77).

A still more glaring instance is to be found when Vasari not only makes misstatements about his own life but is actually out by several years in giving his own age. One and the same event—viz. his journey with Cardinal Passerini to Florence—is given in his own autobiography to the year 1524, in the "Life of Salviati," to the year 1523, and in the "Life of Michael Angelo" to 1525. When he speaks of himself in the same passage in the "Life of Salviati" as the "putto, che allora non aveva più di nove anni," he is making a mistake of at least three years in his own age. And not less delightful is it to read in the "Life of Giovanni da Udine": "Giorgio Vasari, giovinetto di diciotto anni, quando serviva il duca Alessandro de' Medici suo primo signore l'anno 1535." We are obviously not dealing with Messer Giorgio's strongest point, for, as a matter of fact, he was at that time twenty-four years of age! The same false statement of age is found again in his own biography (vii. p. 656, with the variation, "poco piú di diciotto anni").

But I think these instances suffice to prove how little one dare build on such assertions of Vasari. Who dare say if Titian was really only seventy-six in 1566 when the Aretine visited him?

And now a few remarks on the other points raised by Mr.Cook. As a fact, it is an astonishing thing that we have no documentary evidence about Titian before 1511; but does he not share this fate with very many of his great countrymen, with Bellini, Giorgione, Sebastiano, and others? An unfriendly chance has left us entirely in the dark as to the early years of nearly all the great Venetian painters. That Dürer makes no mention of Titian's name in his letters gives no cause for surprise, for even the most celebrated of the younger artists, Giorgione, is not alluded to, and of all those with Bellini, whose fame outshone even then that of all others, only Barbari is mentioned. That Titian's name does not occur in the documents about the Fondaco frescoes may be due to the fact that Giorgione alone was commissioned to undertake the frescoes for the magistrates, and that the latter painter in his turn brought his associate Titian into the work.

Mr. Cook says that Titian still signed himself in 1511 "Dipintore" instead of "Maestro." I am not aware whether in this respect definite regulations or customs were usual in Venice.[166]At any rate, the painter is still described in official documents as late as 1518 as "ser Tizian depentor" (Lorenzi, "Monumenti," No. 366), when, even according to Mr. Cook's theory, he must have been thirty years old; and he is actually so called in 1528 (ibid. No. 403), after appearing in several intermediate documents as "maestro" (Nos. 373, 377). If this argument, however, proves unsound, the last point—viz. that the well-known petition to the senate in 1513 reads more like that of a man of twenty-four than one of thirty-seven—must be left to the hypothesis of individual conjecture.

Must we really close these very long inquiries by confessing they are beyond our ken? It almost seems so. For, with regard to the testimony afforded by family documents, Dr. Jacobi (whose labours were utilised by Crowe and Cavalcaselle) so conscientiously examined all that is left, that a discovery in this direction is not to be looked for. Is the statement of Tizianello that Titian's year of birth was 1477 to be rejected without further question when we remember that, as a relative of the painter, he could have had in 1622 access to documents possibly since lost?

Under these circumstances the only thing left to do is to question the works of Titian. Of these, two can be dated, not indeed with certainty, but with some degree of probability: the dedicatory painting of the Bishop of Pesaro with the portrait of Alexander VI. of 1502-03, and the picture of St. Mark, already mentioned, of the year 1504. Both are, to judge by the style, clearly early works, and both can be connected with definite historical events of the years just mentioned. That these paintings, however, could be the work of a fourteen- to fifteen-year-old artist Mr. Cook will also admit to be impossible.

Much, far too much, in the story of Venetian painting must, for want of definite information, be left to conjecture; and however unsatisfactory it is, we must make the confession that we know as little about the date of the birth of the greatest of the Venetians as we know of Giorgione's, Sebastiano's, Palma's, and the rest. But supposing all of a sudden information turned up giving us the exact date of Titian's birth, would the picture of the development of Venetian painting be any the different for it? In no wise. The relation to one another of the individual artists of the younger generation is so clearly to be read in each man's work, that no external particulars, however interesting they might be on other grounds, could make the smallest difference. Titian's relations with Giorgione especially could not be otherwise represented than has been long determined, and that whetherTitian was born in 1476, 1477, 1480, or even two or three years later.[167]GEORG GRONAU.

Reply to Dr. Gronau. Reprinted from "Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft," vol. xxv., parts 1 and 2

I must thank Dr. Georg Gronau for his very fair reply, published in these pages[168](to my article in theNineteenth Centuryon the subject of Titian's age[169]). He has also most kindly pointed out two pieces of contemporary evidence which had escaped my notice, and although neither of these passages is conclusive proof one way or the other, they deserve to be reckoned with in arriving at a decision.

Dr. Gronau formulates the evidence shortly thus:

and he adds that this new piece of evidence—viz. the letter of the Spanish Consul to King Philip—instead of helping us, only makes the confusion worse.

What then are we to think when yet another—a fourth—contemporary statement turns up, differing from any of the three just quoted? Yet such a letter exists, and I am happy in my turn to point out this fresh piece of evidence, in the hope that instead of making the confusion worse, it will help us to arrive at some decision.

On October the 15th, 1564, Garcia Hernandez, Envoy in Venice from King Philip II., writes to the King his master that Titian begged that His Majesty would condescend to order that he should be paid what was due to him from the court and from Milan.... For the rest the painter was in fine condition, and quite capable of work, and this was the time, if ever, to get "other things" from him, as according to some people who knew him, Titian was about ninety years old, though he did not show it, and for money everything was to be had of him.[170]

In 1564 then the Spanish Envoy writes that Titian was said to be about ninety. Let us then enlarge Dr. Gronau's table by this additional statement, and further complete it by including the earliest piece of evidence, the statement of Dolce in 1557 that Titian was scarcely twenty when he worked at the Fondaco de' Tedeschi frescoes (1507-8). The year of Titian's birth thus works out:

Now it is curious to notice that the last three statements are all made in letters to King Philip, either by Titian himself, or at his request by the Spanish agents.

It is curious to notice these statements as to Titian's great age occur in begging letters.[171]

It is curious to notice they are mutually contradictory.

What are we to conclude?

Surely that the Spanish Envoy, the Spanish Consul, and Titian himself, out of their own mouths stand convicted of inconsistency of statement, and further that they betray an identical motive underlying each representation—viz. an appealad misericordiam.

Before, however, contrasting the value of the evidence as found in these Spanish letters with the evidence as found in Dolce and Vasari, let us note two points in these letters.

Garcia Hernandez, the Spanish Envoy, writes: "According to some people who knew him, Titian was about ninety years old, though he did not show it." Now, if Titian was really about ninety in the year 1564, he will have lived to the age of one hundred and two, a feat of longevity of which no one has ever accused him! Apart, therefore, from the healthy scepticism which Hernandez betrays in this letter, we may certainly conclude that "some people who knew him" were exaggerating Titian's age.

Secondly, Titian's letter of 1571 says he is ninety-five years old. Titian's similar letter of 1576, the year of his death, omits to say he is one hundred. Surely a strange omission, considering that he refers to his old age three times in this one letter.[172]Does not the second letter correct the inexactness of the first? and so Titian's statement goes for nothing?

The collective evidence, then, of these Spanish letters amounts to this, that, in the words of the Envoy, "for money everything was to be had of Titian," and accordingly any statement as to his great age when thus made for effect must be treated with the greatest suspicion.

But is the evidence of Dolce and Vasari any more trustworthy? Dr. Gronau is at pains to show that both thesewriters often made mistakes in their dates, a fact which no one can dispute. Their very incorrectness is the more reason however for trusting them in this instance, for they happen to agree about the date of Titian's birth; and, although neither of them expressly gives the year 1489, they indicate separate and independent events in his life, the one, Dolce, at the beginning, the other, Vasari, at the end, which when looked into give the same result.

Moreover, be Dolce ever so anxious to cry up his hero Titian, and make him out to have been precocious, and be Vasari ever so inexact in his chronology, we must remember that, when both of them wrote, the presumption of unusual longevity had not arisen, and that their evidence therefore is less likely to be prejudiced in this respect than the evidence given in obituary notices, such as occurs in Borghini'sRiposoof 1584, and in the later writers like Tizianello and Ridolfi.

That Borghini therefore says Titian was ninety-eight or ninety-nine when he died, and that Tizianello and Ridolfi, thirty-eight and sixty-four years later respectively, put him down at ninety-nine, is by no means proof that such was the case. It would seem that there had been some speculation before and after Titian's death as to his exact age; that no one quite knew for certain; and that Titian with the credulousness of old age had come to regard himself as well-nigh a centenarian. Be this as it may, I still hold that the evidence of Dolce and Vasari that Titian's birth occurred in 1489 is more trustworthy than either the evidence found in the three Spanish letters, or the evidence as given in the obituary notices of Borghini and others.

One word more. If Titian was born in 1489, instead of 1476-7, it does make a great difference in the story of his own career; and, what is more, the history of Venetian art in the early sixteenth century, as it centres round Giorgione, Palma, and Titian, will have to be carefully reconsidered.

HERBERT COOK.

NOTES:

[148]

The picture now hangs in the Academia at Venice.

[149]

E.g. the "Sacred and Profane Love" (so-called) in the Borghese Gallery; the "S. Mark" of the Salute; the "Concert" in the Pitti; the "Tribute Money" at Dresden; the "Madonna of the Cherries" at Vienna, etc., which one or other of his biographers assign to the years 1500-1510.

[150]

The Life and Times of Titian, 2 vols., 1881.

[151]

The Earlier and Later Work of Titian. Portfolio, October 1897 and July 1898.

[152]

Tizian. Berlin, 1901.

[153]

La Vie et l'Oeuvre de Titien: Paris, 1886.

[154]

See Crowe and Cavalcaselle:Titian, i. 85. The fact that Titian's name does not occur in these records is curious and suggestive.

[155]

Ed.Sansoni, p. 459. The translation is that of Blashfield and Hopkins. Bell, 1897.

[156]

Ibid. p. 425.

[157]

Ibid. p. 428.

[158]

The translation is that of Crowe and Cavalcaselle.Titian, ii. 391. The original is given by them at p. 538.

[159]

Quoted from Crowe and Cavalcaselle.

[160]

Crowe and Cavalcaselle.Titian, ii. 409.

[161]

There is a collection of these in a volume in the British Museum.

[162]

Before the discovery of the letter to Philip, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle were quite prepared to admit that Titian was born "after 1480" (videN. Italian Painting, ii. 119, 120). Unfortunately, they took the evidence of the letter as final, but finding themselves chronologically in difficulties, they shrewdly remark in theirTitian, i. 38, note: "The writers of these lines thought, andstill think, Titian younger than either Giorgione or Palma. They were, however, inclined to transpose Titian's birthday to a later date than 1477, rather than put back those of Palma and Giorgione to an earlier period, and in this they made a mistake." Perhaps they were not so far wrong after all!

[163]

For this most amusing letter see Crowe and Cavalcaselle.Titian, i. p. 153.

[164]

The evidence afforded by Titian's own portraits of himself (at Berlin and in the Uffizi) is inconclusive, as we do not know the exact years they were painted. The portrait at Madrid, painted 1562, might represent a man of seventy-three or eighty-six, it is hard to say which. But there is a woodcut of 1550 (videGronau, p. 164) which surely shows Titian at the age of sixty-one rather than seventy-four; and, finally, Paul Veronese's great "Marriage at Cana" (in the Louvre), which was painted between June 1562 and September 1563, distinctly points to Titian being then a man of seventy-four and not eighty-seven. He is represented, as is well known, seated in the group of musicians in the centre, and playing the contrabasso.

[165]

Jahrbuch der Sammlungen des A.H. Kaiserhauses, vii. p. 221ff1888.

[166]

Dr. Ludwig had the kindness to write to me on this subject: "Among the thousands of signatures of painters which I have seen I have never come across the signatureMaestro. Of course, someone else can describe a painter as Master; he himself always subscribes himselfpittor, pictor, ordepentor."

[167]

Dr. Gronau further points out (in a letter recently sent to the writer) that Titian, writing to the emperor in 1545, says: "I should have liked to take them (i.e. the paintings) to your Majesty in person, but that my age and the length of the journey forbade such a course" (C. and C. ii. 103). Writing also in 1548 to Granvella he refers to his "vechia vita." Would not such expressions (asks Dr. Gronau) be more applicable to a man of sixty-eight and seventy-one respectively than to one of only fifty-six and fifty-nine?

[168]

XXIV. Band. 6 Heft, p. 457.

[169]

January 1902, pp. 123-130.

[170]

Quoted from Crowe and Cavalcaselle. II. 344. The Spanish original is given at p. 535.

[171]

I have quoted Titian's letter in full in theNineteenth Century. That of the Spanish Consul is given in theJahrbuch der Sammlungen des A.H. Kaiserhauses, vii. p. 221, from which I extract the passage: "El dicho Ticiano besa pies y manos de V.M., y suplica umilmente a V.M. mande le sea pagado lo que le ha corrido de las pensiones de que V.M. le tiene echo merced en Milan y en esa corte, y la trata de Napoles, y con los 85 años de su edad servira a V.M. hasta la muerte."

[172]

I have quoted this letter also in full in theNineteenth Century.I am indebted to M. Salomon Reinach for making this point (Chronique des Arts, Feb. 15, 1902, p. 53, where he expresses himself a convert to my views).

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

BUDA-PESTH GALLERY.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN. [No. 94.]

Esterhazy Collection. (See p. 31.)

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