I have pointed out in the text that the above description of the two pictures “de una notte” corresponds with the actual Beaumont and Vienna “Nativities,” or “Adoration of the Shepherds,” in which I recognise the hand of Giorgione.

* * * * *

The following is the only existing document in Giorgione’s own handwriting.  It was published by Molmenti in the Bollettino delle Arti, anno ii.  No. 2, and reprinted by Conti, p. 50:—­

“El se dichiara per el presente come el clarissimo Messer Aluixe di Sesti die a fare a mi Zorzon de Castelfrancho quatro quadri in quadrato con le geste di Daniele in bona pictura su telle, et li telleri sarano soministrati per dito m.  Aluixe, il quale doveva stabilir la spexa di detti quadri quando serano compidi et di sua satisfatione entro il presente anno 1508.

     “Io Zorzon de Castelfrancho di mia man scrissi la presente in
     Venetia li 13 febrar 1508.”

Whether or no Giorgione ever completed these four square canvases with the story of Daniel is unknown.  There is no trace of any such pictures in modern times.

APPENDIX II

DID TITIAN LIVE TO BE NINETY-NINE YEARS OLD?

Reprinted from the “Nineteenth Century” Jan. 1902

There is something fascinating in the popular belief that Titian, the greatest of all Venetian painters, reached the patriarchal age of ninety-nine years, and was actively at work up to the day of his death.  The text-books love to tell us the story of the great unfinished “Pieta” with its pathetic inscription: 

    Quod Titianus inchoatum reliquit
    Palma reverenter absolvit
    Deoq. dicavit opus;

and traveller, guide-book in hand, and moralist, philosophy in head, alike muse upon a phenomenon so startlingly at variance with common experience.[148]

But, sentiment aside, is there any historical evidence that Titian ever worked at his art in his hundredth year? that he even attained such a venerable age?  The answer is of wider consequence than the mere question implies, for on the correct determination of Titian’s own chronology depends the history of the development of the entire Venetian school of painting in the early years of the sixteenth century.  I say early, because it is the date of Titian’s birth, and not that of his death, which I shall endeavour to fix; the latter event is known beyond possibility of doubt to have occurred in August 1576.  The question, therefore, to consider is, what justification, if any, is there for the universal belief that Titian was born in 1476-7, just a hundred years previously?

Anyone, I think, who has ever looked into the history of Titian’s career must have been struck by the fact that for the first thirty-five years of his life (according to the usual chronology) there is absolutely no documentary record relating to him, whether in the Venetian archives or elsewhere.  Not a single letter, not a single contract, not a single mention of his name occurs from which we can so much as affirm his existence before the year 1511.