Young Tiziano from Cadore did not like the mere following of a set pattern—­he introduced variations of his own, and got his nose tweaked for trying to improve on a good thing.  Altogether he seemed to have had a hard time of it there at Messer Zuccato’s mosaic-shop.

The painter’s art, then as now, preceded the art of the mosaicist, for the picture or design to be made in mosaic is first carefully drawn on paper, and then colored, and the worker in mosaic is supposed simply to follow copy.  When you visit the glass-factories of Venice today, you see the painted picture tacked up on the wall before the workmen, who with deft fingers stick the bits of glass into their beds of putty.  This scheme of painting a pattern is in order that cheap help can be employed; when it began we do not know, but we do know there was a time when the great artist in mosaic had his design in his head, and materialized it by rightly placing the bits of glass with his own hands, experimenting, selecting and rejecting until the thing was right.  But this was before the time of Titian, for when Titian came down to Venice there were painters employed in the shop of Sebastian Zuccato who made the designs for the dunderheads to follow.  That is not just the word the painters used to designate the boys and women who placed the bits of glass in position, but it meant the same thing.

The painters thought themselves great folks, and used to make the others wait on them and run errands, serving them as “fags.”

But the Vecellio boy did not worship at the shrine of the painters who made the designs.  He said he could make as good pictures himself, and still continued to make changes in the designs when he thought they should be made; and once in a dispute between the boy and the maker of a design, the master took sides with the boy.  This inflated the lad with his own importance so, that shortly after he applied for the position of the quarrelsome designer.

The fine audacity of the youngster so pleased the master that he allowed him to try his hand with the painters a few hours each day.  He was getting no wages anyway, only his board, and the kind of board did not cost much, so it did not make much difference.

In Venice at that time there were two painters by the name of Bellini—­Gentile and Giovanni, sons of the painter Jacob Bellini, who had brought his boys up in the way they should go.  Gian, as the Venetians called the younger brother, was the more noted of the two.  Occasionally he made designs for the mosaicists, and this sometimes brought him to the shop where young Titian worked.

The boy got on speaking terms with the great painter, and ran errands back and forth from his studio.  When twelve years of age we find him duly installed as a helper at Gian Bellini’s studio, with an easel and box of paints all his own.

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The brightest scholar in the studio of Gian Bellini was a young man by the name of Giorgio, but they called him Giorgione, which being interpreted means George the Great.  He was about the age of Titian, and the two became firm friends.