large picture for the high altar of the Church of the Frate Minori,
where Titian, quite a young man, painted in oil the Virgin ascending to
Heaven.... This was the first public work which he painted in oil, and
he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man."

Vasari's account of Titian's early years is substantially the same, but
unfortunately opens with the statement that he was "born in the year
1480." This might easily have been a slip of the pen or a printer's
mistake for 1488 or 1489, and subsequent passages in the life bear out
this supposition. But partly because Titian was a Venetian and not a
Florentine, and partly, no doubt, because he was still alive, and had
been producing picture after picture for over sixty years at the time
Vasari published his second edition in 1568, the whole account is so
confused and inaccurate that its credit has been severely shaken by
modern critics, with the result that it is hardly nowadays considered
authentic in any respect. The following extracts, however, there seems
no reason to question:----

"About the year 1507, Giorgione not being satisfied [with the
old-fashioned methods of Bellini and others] began to give his works an
unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner."
And a little later "Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early
resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded
therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a
short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were
sometimes taken for those of this master, as will be related below.
Increasing in age, judgment and facility of hand, our young artist
executed numerous works in fresco.... At the time when he began to adopt
the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the
portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and
this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and
natural, the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted,
as might also the stitches in a satin doublet painted in the same work;
in a word, it was so well and carefully done that it would have been
taken for a work of Giorgione if Titian had not written his name on the
dark ground."

With this we may leave the question of Titian's birth date, and consider
the exceptional interest attaching to the question of this Barberigo
portrait. According to Mr. Cook, and also, under reserve