Must we really close these very long inquiries by confessing they are beyond our ken?  It almost seems so.  For, with regard to the testimony afforded by family documents, Dr. Jacobi (whose labours were utilised by Crowe and Cavalcaselle) so conscientiously examined all that is left, that a discovery in this direction is not to be looked for.  Is the statement of Tizianello that Titian’s year of birth was 1477 to be rejected without further question when we remember that, as a relative of the painter, he could have had in 1622 access to documents possibly since lost?

Under these circumstances the only thing left to do is to question the works of Titian.  Of these, two can be dated, not indeed with certainty, but with some degree of probability:  the dedicatory painting of the Bishop of Pesaro with the portrait of Alexander VI. of 1502-03, and the picture of St. Mark, already mentioned, of the year 1504.  Both are, to judge by the style, clearly early works, and both can be connected with definite historical events of the years just mentioned.  That these paintings, however, could be the work of a fourteen- to fifteen-year-old artist Mr. Cook will also admit to be impossible.

Much, far too much, in the story of Venetian painting must, for want of definite information, be left to conjecture; and however unsatisfactory it is, we must make the confession that we know as little about the date of the birth of the greatest of the Venetians as we know of Giorgione’s, Sebastiano’s, Palma’s, and the rest.  But supposing all of a sudden information turned up giving us the exact date of Titian’s birth, would the picture of the development of Venetian painting be any the different for it?  In no wise.  The relation to one another of the individual artists of the younger generation is so clearly to be read in each man’s work, that no external particulars, however interesting they might be on other grounds, could make the smallest difference.  Titian’s relations with Giorgione especially could not be otherwise represented than has been long determined, and that whether Titian was born in 1476, 1477, 1480, or even two or three years later.[167] GEORG GRONAU.

WHEN WAS TITIAN BORN?

Reply to Dr. Gronau.  Reprinted from “Repertorium fuer Kunstwissenschaft,” vol. xxv., parts 1 and 2

I must thank Dr. Georg Gronau for his very fair reply, published in these pages[168] (to my article in the Nineteenth Century on the subject of Titian’s age[169]).  He has also most kindly pointed out two pieces of contemporary evidence which had escaped my notice, and although neither of these passages is conclusive proof one way or the other, they deserve to be reckoned with in arriving at a decision.

Dr. Gronau formulates the evidence shortly thus: 

Vasari in 1566 or 1567 says Titian is over 76
The Spanish Consul in 1567 " " 85
Titian himself in 1571 " he is " 95