because he has been complimented by friends on the superior beauty
of some work on the "_facciata di verso la Merceria,_" which in reality
belongs to Titian, and thereupon implacably cutting short their
connection and friendship. This version is confirmed by Dolce, but
refuted by the less contemporary authority of Tizianello's _Anonimo_. Of
what great painters, standing in the relation of master and pupil, have
not such stories been told, and--the worst of it is--told with a certain
foundation of truth? Apocryphal is, no doubt, that which has evolved
itself from the internal evidence supplied by the _Baptism of Christ_ of
Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci; but a stronger substructure of fact
supports the unpleasing anecdotes as to Titian and Tintoretto, as to
Watteau and Pater, as to our own Hudson and Reynolds, and, alas! as to
very many others. How touching, on the other hand, is that simple entry
in Francesco Francia's day-book, made when his chief journeyman,
Timoteo Viti, leaves him: "1495 a di 4 aprile e partito il mio caro
Timoteo; chi Dio li dia ogni bene et fortuna!" ("On the 4th day of April
1495 my dear Timoteo left me. May God grant him all happiness and good
fortune!")

[Illustration: _The Baptism of Christ. Gallery of the Capitol, Rome.
From a Photograph by Anderson._]

There is one reason that makes it doubly difficult, relying on
developments of style only, to make, even tentatively, a chronological
arrangement of Titian's early works. This is that in those painted
_poesie_ of the earlier Venetian art of which the germs are to be found
in Giovanni Bellini and Cima, but the flower is identified with
Giorgione, Titian surrendered himself to the overmastering influence of
the latter with less reservation of his own individuality than in his
sacred works. In the earlier imaginative subjects the vivifying glow of
Giorgionesque poetry moulds, colours, and expands the genius of Titian,
but so naturally as neither to obliterate nor to constrain it. Indeed,
even in the late time of our master--checking an unveiled sensuousness
which sometimes approaches dangerously near to a downright
sensuality--the influence of the master and companion who vanished half
a century before victoriously reasserts itself. It is this _renouveau_
of the Giorgionesque in the genius of the aged Titian that gives so
exquisite a charm to the _Venere del Pardo_, so strange a pathos to that
still later _Nymph and Shepherd,_ which was a few