e will have died at eighty-seven and not in his hundredth
year. The alteration in date would help to explain the silence of all
records about him before 1511, when he would have been only twenty-two
and not thirty-five years old; it would fully account for his name not
being mentioned by Duerer in his famous letter of 1506, wherein he refers
to the painters of Venice, and it would equally account for the absence
of his name from the commission to paint the Fondaco frescoes in 1507-8,
for he would have been employed simply as Giorgione's young assistant.
The fact that in 1511 he signs himself simply "Io tician di Cador
Dpntore" and not _Maestro_ would be more intelligible in a young man of
twenty-two than in an accomplished master of thirty-five, and the
character of his letter addressed to the Senate in 1513 would be more
natural to an ambitious aspirant of twenty-four than to a man in his
maturity of thirty-seven.[163]

Such are some of the obvious results of a change of date, but the larger
question as to the development of Titian's art must be left to the
future historian, for the importance of fixing a date lies in the
application thereof.[164] HERBERT COOK.

THE DATE OF TITIAN'S BIRTH

_Reply by Dr. Georg Gronau. Translated from the "Repertorium fuer
Kunstwissenschaft," vol. xxiv., 6th part_

In the January number of the _Nineteenth Century_ appears an article by
Herbert Cook under the title, "Did Titian live to be Ninety-Nine Years
Old?" The interrogation already suggests that the author comes to a
negative conclusion. It is, perhaps, not without interest to set forth
the reasons advanced by the English connoisseur and to submit them to
adverse criticism.

(Here follows an abstract of the article.)

The reasoning, as will have been seen, is not altogether free from
doubt. It has been usual hitherto in historical investigations to call
in question the assertions of a man about his own life only when
thoroughly weighty reasons justified such a course. Is the evidence of a
Dolce and of a Vasari so free from all objection that it outweighs
Titian's personal statement? Before answering this question it should be
pointed out that we possess two further statements of contemporary
writers on the subject of Titian's age, statements which have escaped
the notice of Mr. Cook. One is to be found in a letter from the Spanish
Consul in Venice, Thomas de Cornoga, to Philip II., dated 8th December
1567 (published in th