Now there is a picture in the Earl of Darnley’s Collection at Cobham Hall which answers pretty closely to Vasari’s description.  It is a supposed portrait of Ariosto by Titian, but it is as much unlike the court poet of Ferrara as the portrait in the National Gallery (No. 636) which, with equal absurdity, long passed for that of Ariosto, a name now wisely removed from the label.  This magnificent portrait at Cobham was last exhibited at the Old Masters in 1895, and the suggestion was then made that it might be the very picture mentioned by Vasari in the passage quoted above.[87] I believe this ingenious suggestion is correct, and that we have in the Cobham “Ariosto” the portrait of one of the Barberigo family said to have been painted by Titian in the manner of Giorgione.  “Thoroughly Giorgionesque,” says Mr. Claude Phillips, in his Life of Titian, “is the soberly tinted yet sumptuous picture in its general arrangement, as in its general tone, and in this respect it is the fitting companion and the descendant of Giorgione’s ’Antonio Broccardo’ at Buda-Pesth, of his ‘Knight of Malta’ at the Uffizi.  Its resemblance, moreover, is, as regards the general lines of the composition, a very striking one to the celebrated Sciarra ‘Violin-Player,’ by Sebastiano del Piombo....  The handsome, manly head has lost both subtlety and character through some too severe process of cleaning, but Venetian art has hardly anything more magnificent to show than the costume, with the quilted sleeve of steely, blue-grey satin, which occupies so prominent a place in the picture.”  Its Giorgionesque character is therefore recognised by this writer, as also by Dr. Georg Gronau, in his recent Life of Titian (p. 21), who significantly remarks, “Its relation to the ‘Portrait of a Young Man’ by Giorgione, at Berlin, is obvious.”

It is a pity that both these discerning writers of the modern school have not gone a little further and seen that the picture before them is not only Giorgionesque, but by Giorgione himself.  The mistake of confusing Titian and Giorgione is as old as Vasari, who, misled by the signature, naively remarks, “It would have been taken for a picture by Giorgione if Titian had not written his name on the dark ground (in ombra).” Hinc illae lacrimae! Let us look into this question of signatures, the ultimate and irrevocable proof in the minds of the innocent that a picture must be genuine.  Titian’s methods of signing his well-authenticated works varied at different stages of his career.  The earliest signature is always “Ticianus,” and this is found on works dating down to 1522 (the “S.  Sebastian” at Brescia).  The usual signature of the later time is “Titianus,” probably the earliest picture with it being the Ancona altar-piece of 1520.  “Tician” is found only twice.  Now, without necessarily condemning every signature which does not accord with this practice, we must explain any apparent irregularity, such, for instance, as