te, in 1477. There is a tradition that while other painters made
their first essays in art with chalk or charcoal, the boy Titian, who
lived to be a glorious colourist, made his earliest trials in painting
with the juice of flowers. Titian studied in Venice under the Bellini,
and had Giorgione, who was born in the same year, for his
fellow-scholar, at first his friend, later his rival. When a young man
Titian spent some time in Ferrara; there he painted his 'Bacchus and
Ariadne,' and a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia. In 1512, when Titian was
thirty-five years of age, he was commissioned by the Venetians to
continue the works in the great council-hall, which the advanced age of
Gian Bellini kept him from finishing. Along with this commission Titian
was appointed in 1516 to the office of la Sanseria, which gave him the
duty and privilege of painting the portraits of the Doges as long as he
held the office; coupled with the office was a salary of one hundred
and twenty crowns a year. Titian lived to paint five Doges; two others,
his age, equal to that of Gian Bellini, prevented him from painting.

In 1516, Titian painted his greatest sacred picture, the 'Assumption of
the Virgin.' In the same year he painted the poet Ariosto, who mentions
the painter with high honour in his verse.

In 1530, Titian, a man of fifty-three years, was at Bologna, where there
was a meeting between Charles V, and Pope Clement VII., when he was
presented to both princes.

Charles V, and Philip II, became afterwards great patrons and admirers
of Titian, and it is of Charles V. and Titian that a legend, to which I
have already referred, is told. The Emperor, visiting the painter while
he was at work, stooped down and picked up a pencil, which Titian had
let fall, to the confusion and distress of the painter, when Charles
paid the princely compliment, 'Titian is worthy of being served by
Caesar.' Titian painted many portraits of Charles V., and of the members
of his house. As Maximilian had created Albrecht Duerer a noble of the
Empire, Charles V, created Titian a Count Palatine, and a Knight of the
Order of St Iago, with a pension, which was continued by Philip II., of
four hundred crowns a year. It is doubtful whether Titian ever visited
the Spain of his patrons, but Madrid possesses forty-three of his
pictures, among them some of his finest works.

Titian went to Rome in his later years, but declined to abandon for Rome
the painter's native Venice