Anyone conversant with Vasari’s inaccuracies will hardly be surprised to find that this statement is dismissed by all Titian’s biographers as manifestly a mistake.  Moreover, it is inconsistent with the two passages just quoted, and either they are wrong or 1480 is a misprint for 1489.  Now, from the nature of the evidence recorded by Vasari, it cannot be a matter for any doubt which is the more trustworthy statement.  On the one hand, he speaks as an eye-witness of Titian’s old age, and is careful to record the exact year he visited Venice and the age of the painter; on the other hand, he makes a bald statement which he certainly cannot have verified, and which is inconsistent with his own experience!  In any case, in Vasari’s text the evidence is two to one in favour of 1489-90 as the right date, and thus we come to the agreeable conclusion that our two oldest authorities, Dolce and Vasari, are at one in fixing Titian’s birth between 1488 and 1490—­in other words, about 1489.

So far, then, all is clear, and as we know from later and indisputable evidence that Titian died in 1576, it follows that he only attained the age of eighty-seven and not ninety-nine.  Whence, then, comes the story of the ninety-nine years?  From none other than Titian himself, and to this piece of evidence we must next turn, following out a strict chronological order.

In 1571—­that is, three years after Vasari’s second edition was published—­Titian addresses a letter to Philip the Second of Spain in these terms:[158]

“Most potent and invincible King,—­I think your Majesty will have received by this the picture of ‘Lucretia and Tarquin’ which was to have been presented by the Venetian Ambassador.  I now come with these lines to ask your Majesty to deign to command that I should be informed as to what pleasure it has given.  The calamities of the present times, in which every one is suffering from the continuance of war, force me to this step, and oblige me at the same time to ask to be favoured with some kind proof of your Majesty’s grace, as well as with some assistance from Spain or elsewhere, since I have not been able for years past to obtain any payment either from the Naples grant, or from my ordinary pension.  The state of my affairs is indeed such that I do not know how to live in this my old age, devoted as it entirely is to the service of your Catholic Majesty, and to no other.  Not having for eighteen years past received a quattrino for the paintings which I delivered from time to time, and of which I forward a list by this opportunity to the secretary Perez, I feel assured that your Majesty’s infinite clemency will cause a careful consideration to be made of the services of an old servant of the age of ninety-five, by extending to him some evidence of munificence and liberality.  Sending two prints of the design of the Beato Lorenzo, and most humbly recommending myself,

     “I am Your Catholic Majesty’s