f his life (according to the usual chronology) there is absolutely no
documentary record relating to him, whether in the Venetian archives or
elsewhere. Not a single letter, not a single contract, not a single
mention of his name occurs from which we can so much as affirm his
existence before the year 1511.

On the 2nd of December in that year "Io tician di Cador Dpntore" gives a
receipt for money paid him on completion of some frescoes at Padua, and
from this date on there are frequent letters and documents in existence
right down to 1576, the year of his death. Is it not somewhat strange
that the first thirty-five years of his life (as is commonly believed)
should be a total blank so far as records go? The fact becomes the more
inexplicable when we find that during these early years some of his
finest work is alleged to have been executed, and he must--if we accept
the chronology of his biographers--have been well known to and highly
esteemed by his contemporaries.[149] Moreover, it is not for want of
diligent search amongst the archives that nothing has been found, for
Italian and German students have alike sought, but in vain, to discover
any documentary evidence relating to his career before 1511.

The absence of any such trustworthy record has had its natural result.
Conjecture has run riot, and no two writers are agreed on the subject of
the nature and development of Titian's earlier art. This is the second
disquieting fact which any careful student has to face. Messrs. Crowe
and Cavalcaselle, Titian's most exhaustive biographers,[150] have filled
up the first thirty-five years of his career in their own way, but their
chronology has found no favour with later writers, such as Mr. Claude
Phillips in England[151] or Dr. Georg Gronau in Germany,[152] both of
whom have arrived at independent conclusions. Morelli again had his
theories on the subject, and M. Lafenestre[153] has his, and the
ordinary gallery catalogue is usually content to state inaccurate facts
without further ado.

Now, if all these conscientious writers arrive at results so widely
divergent, either their logic or their data must be wrong! One and all
assume that Titian lived into his hundredth year, and, therefore, was
born in 1476-7; and starting with this theory as a fact, they have tried
to fit in Vasari's account as best they can, and each has found a
different solution of the problem. There is only one way out of this
chaos of conjectures--w