d 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 timely
exaggeration 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 any _ex parte_ statement 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, such _ex
parte_ statements 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 founda