is confirmed by Dolce, but refuted by the less contemporary authority of Tizianello’s Anonimo.  Of what great painters, standing in the relation of master and pupil, have not such stories been told, and—­the worst of it is—­told with a certain foundation of truth?  Apocryphal is, no doubt, that which has evolved itself from the internal evidence supplied by the Baptism of Christ of Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci; but a stronger substructure of fact supports the unpleasing anecdotes as to Titian and Tintoretto, as to Watteau and Pater, as to our own Hudson and Reynolds, and, alas! as to very many others.  How touching, on the other hand, is that simple entry in Francesco Francia’s day-book, made when his chief journeyman, Timoteo Viti, leaves him:  “1495 a di 4 aprile e partito il mio caro Timoteo; chi Dio li dia ogni bene et fortuna!” ("On the 4th day of April 1495 my dear Timoteo left me.  May God grant him all happiness and good fortune!”)

[Illustration:  The Baptism of Christ.  Gallery of the Capitol, Rome.  From a Photograph by Anderson.]

There is one reason that makes it doubly difficult, relying on developments of style only, to make, even tentatively, a chronological arrangement of Titian’s early works.  This is that in those painted poesie of the earlier Venetian art of which the germs are to be found in Giovanni Bellini and Cima, but the flower is identified with Giorgione, Titian surrendered himself to the overmastering influence of the latter with less reservation of his own individuality than in his sacred works.  In the earlier imaginative subjects the vivifying glow of Giorgionesque poetry moulds, colours, and expands the genius of Titian, but so naturally as neither to obliterate nor to constrain it.  Indeed, even in the late time of our master—­checking an unveiled sensuousness which sometimes approaches dangerously near to a downright sensuality—­the influence of the master and companion who vanished half a century before victoriously reasserts itself.  It is this renouveau of the Giorgionesque in the genius of the aged Titian that gives so exquisite a charm to the Venere del Pardo, so strange a pathos to that still later Nymph and Shepherd, which was a few years ago brought out of its obscurity and added to the treasures of the Imperial Gallery at Vienna.

The sacred works of the early time are Giorgionesque, too, but with a difference.  Here from the very beginning there are to be noted a majestic placidity, a fulness of life, a splendour of representation, very different from the tremulous sweetness, the spirit of aloofness and reserve which informs such creations as the Madonna of Castelfranco and the Madonna with St. Francis and St. Roch of the Prado Museum.  Later on, we have, leaving farther and farther behind the Giorgionesque ideal, the overpowering force and majesty of the Assunta, the true passion going hand-in-hand with beauty of the Louvre Entombment, the rhetorical passion and scenic magnificence of the St. Peter Martyr.