, which had lavished her favours on her son.
He lived in great splendour, paying annual summer visits to his
birth-place of Cadore, and occasionally dwelling again for a time at
Ferrara, Urbino, Bologna. In two instances he joined the Emperor at
Augsburgh. When Henry III, of France landed at Venice, he was
entertained _en grand seigneur_ by Titian, then a very old man; and when
the king asked the price of some pictures which pleased him, Titian at
once presented them as a gift to his royal guest.

Titian married, as has been recently ascertained, and had three
children,--two sons, the elder a worthless and scandalous priest; the
second a good son and accomplished painter; and a daughter, the
beautiful Lavinia, so often painted by her father, and whose name will
live with his. Titian survived his wife thirty-six years; and his
daughter, who had married, and was the mother of several children, six
years. His second son and fellow-painter died of the same plague which
struck down Titian, in 1566, at the ripe age of eighty-nine years.

Titian is said to have been a man of irritable and passionate temper.
The hatred between him and the painter, Pordenone, was so bitter, that
the latter thought his life in danger, and painted with his shield and
poniard lying ready to his hand. Titian grasped with imperious tenacity
his supremacy as a painter, sedulously kept the secrets of his skill,
and was most unmagnanimously jealous of the attainments of his scholars.
No defect of temper, however, kept Titian from having two inseparable
convivial companions--one of them the architect, Sansovino, and the
other the profligate wit, Aretino, who was pleased to style himself the
'friend of Titian and the scourge of princes.' Though Titian is said, in
the panic of the great plague, to have died not only neglected, but
plundered before his eyes, still Venice prized him so highly, that she
made in his favour the single exception of a public funeral, during the
appalling devastation wrought by the pestilence.

From an engraving of a portrait of Titian by himself, which is before
me, I can give the best idea of his person. He looks like one of the
merchant princes, whom he painted so often and so well, in richly furred
gown, massive chain, and small cap, far off his broad forehead: a
stately figure, with a face--in its aquiline nose and keen eyes, full of
sagacity and fire, which no years could tame.

Towards the close of Titian's life, there w