lowing is the only existing document in Giorgione's own
handwriting. It was published by Molmenti in the _Bollettino delle
Arti_, anno ii. No. 2, and reprinted by Conti, p. 50:--

"El se dichiara per el presente come el clarissimo Messer Aluixe di
Sesti die a fare a mi Zorzon de Castelfrancho quatro quadri in
quadrato con le geste di Daniele in bona pictura su telle, et li
telleri sarano soministrati per dito m. Aluixe, il quale doveva
stabilir la spexa di detti quadri quando serano compidi et di sua
satisfatione entro il presente anno 1508.

"Io Zorzon de Castelfrancho di mia man scrissi la presente in
Venetia li 13 febrar 1508."

Whether or no Giorgione ever completed these four square canvases with
the story of Daniel is unknown. There is no trace of any such pictures
in modern times.

APPENDIX II

DID TITIAN LIVE TO BE NINETY-NINE YEARS OLD?

_Reprinted from the "Nineteenth Century" Jan_. 1902

There is something fascinating in the popular belief that Titian, the
greatest of all Venetian painters, reached the patriarchal age of
ninety-nine years, and was actively at work up to the day of his death.
The text-books love to tell us the story of the great unfinished "Pieta"
with its pathetic inscription:

Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit
Palma reverenter absolvit
Deoq. dicavit opus;

and traveller, guide-book in hand, and moralist, philosophy in head,
alike muse upon a phenomenon so startlingly at variance with common
experience.[148]

But, sentiment aside, is there any historical evidence that Titian ever
worked at his art in his hundredth year? that he even attained such a
venerable age? The answer is of wider consequence than the mere question
implies, for on the correct determination of Titian's own chronology
depends the history of the development of the entire Venetian school of
painting in the early years of the sixteenth century. I say _early_,
because it is the date of Titian's birth, and not that of his death,
which I shall endeavour to fix; the latter event is known beyond
possibility of doubt to have occurred in August 1576. The question,
therefore, to consider is, what justification, if any, is there for the
universal belief that Titian was born in 1476-7, just a hundred years
previously?

Anyone, I think, who has ever looked into the history of Titian's career
must have been struck by the fact that for the first thirty-five years
o