him that "if he was sometimes equal to Titian, he was often inferior to Tintoretto." Secondly, "when no one would pay for his colours (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on), he used cheap blue for ultramarine;" and he worked so rapidly, "and on such large spaces of canvas, that, between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most part." Tintoret, from the rapidity of his execution, received the nickname of _il Furioso_; and Sebastiano del Piombo used to say that Tintoret could paint as much in two days as would occupy him for two years. Thirdly, Tintoret "is entirely unconcerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them; when he finishes his work, it is, because he is in the humour to do so; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tintoret simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes" (_Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim_). The well-founded pride which is thus stamped on Tintoret's art is conspicuous in his life. From the first he stood alone. His father had sent him as a boy to Titian's studio; but after ten days the master dismissed him. From this time forward the two men remained upon distant terms,--Tintoretto being indeed an ardent admirer of Titian, but never a friend, and Titian and his set turning the cold shoulder upon Tintoret. The slight passed by Titian upon the young Tintoret threw him back upon his own resources, and henceforth he pursued his own ideals, self-taught. He bought casts from the antique and from the works of Michelangelo; he devoted the day to painting, and in the night he made drawings from his casts. His persevering labour won for him in time a high position among the painters of Venice, and before he was forty he had become the acknowledged rival of Titian himself. For some years, however, he worked in poverty, often accepting commissions without pay, and when he became famous he often worked "for nothing." For years he painted in the Scuola di San Rocco--"a shrine reared by Tintoret to his own genius"--at the rate of 100 ducats a year. For his "Paradise" in the Ducal Palace, "the greatest picture in the world," he was asked to name his own price, but he left it to the State, and abated something from what they tendered. While the commission was still pending, Tintoret used to tell the senators that he prayed to God for it, so that paradise itself might perchance be his recompense after death. His exquisite "Three Graces" in the Ducal Palace was painted for fifty ducats. He lived aloof from the world, seldom leaving Venice.