t this was before
the time of Titian, for when Titian came down to Venice there were
painters employed in the shop of Sebastian Zuccato who made the designs
for the dunderheads to follow. That is not just the word the painters
used to designate the boys and women who placed the bits of glass in
position, but it meant the same thing.

The painters thought themselves great folks, and used to make the others
wait on them and run errands, serving them as "fags."

But the Vecellio boy did not worship at the shrine of the painters who
made the designs. He said he could make as good pictures himself, and
still continued to make changes in the designs when he thought they
should be made; and once in a dispute between the boy and the maker of a
design, the master took sides with the boy. This inflated the lad with
his own importance so, that shortly after he applied for the position of
the quarrelsome designer.

The fine audacity of the youngster so pleased the master that he allowed
him to try his hand with the painters a few hours each day. He was
getting no wages anyway, only his board, and the kind of board did not
cost much, so it did not make much difference.

In Venice at that time there were two painters by the name of
Bellini--Gentile and Giovanni, sons of the painter Jacob Bellini, who had
brought his boys up in the way they should go. Gian, as the Venetians
called the younger brother, was the more noted of the two. Occasionally
he made designs for the mosaicists, and this sometimes brought him to
the shop where young Titian worked.

The boy got on speaking terms with the great painter, and ran errands
back and forth from his studio. When twelve years of age we find him duly
installed as a helper at Gian Bellini's studio, with an easel and box of
paints all his own.

* * * * *

The brightest scholar in the studio of Gian Bellini was a young man by
the name of Giorgio, but they called him Giorgione, which being
interpreted means George the Great. He was about the age of Titian, and
the two became firm friends.

Giorgione was nearly twenty when we first hear of him. He was a handsome
fellow--tall, slender, with an olive complexion and dreamy brown eyes.
There was a becoming flavor of melancholy in his manner, and more than
one gracious dame sought to lure him back to earth, away from his
sadness, out of the dream-world in which he lived.

Giorgione was a musician and a poet. He s