The story is told, though it has been denied by some authorities, that before he was ten years of age he had painted, on the walls of his home at Cadore, with the juice of flowers, a Madonna, the Child standing on her knee, while an angel kneels at her feet. The father and relatives were greatly surprised and pleased, and the lad was taken to Venice, seventy miles from Cadore, and placed with an uncle, so that he might study under the best artists. His first teacher seems to have been Sebastian Zuccato, the leader of the guild of mosaic-workers. He was soon, however, drawn to the studio of Gentile Bellini, an artist seventy years old, noted for his knowledge of perspective and skill in composition. He had travelled much, and had gathered into his home pictures and mosaics of great value: the head of Plato, a statue of Venus by Praxiteles, and other renowned works. What an influence has such a home on a susceptible boy of eleven or twelve years of age! Gentile was a man of tender heart as well as of refined taste. Asked to paint portraits of the sultan and sultana, the aged artist went to Constantinople in 1479 and presented the ruler with a picture of the decapitation of St. John. The sultan criticised the work, and, to show the painter the truth of the criticism, had the head of a slave struck off in his presence, whereupon the artist, sick at heart, returned at once to Venice. The young Cadorine studied carefully the minute drawings of Gentile Bellini, but, with an originality peculiar to himself, sketched boldly and rapidly. The master was displeased, and the boy sought the studio of his brother, Giovanni Bellini, an artist with more brilliant style, and broader contrasts in light and shade. Here he met Giorgione as a fellow-pupil, who soon became his warm friend. This man studied the works of Leonardo da Vinci, and became distinguished for boldness of design and richness of color. Titian was his assistant and devoted admirer. Another person who greatly influenced the early life of Titian was Palma Vecchio of Bergamo, eminent for his portraits of women. Perhaps there was a special bond between these two men, for it is asserted that Titian loved Palma's beautiful daughter, Violante. Palma had three daughters, whom he frequently painted; one picture, now at Dresden, shows Violante in the centre between her two sisters; another, St. Barbara in the church of Santa Maria Formosa in Venice, Palma's masterpiece, and still another, Violante, at Vienna, with a violet in her bosom. Titian's earliest works were a fresco of Hercules, on the front of the Morosini Palace; a Madonna, now in the Vienna Belvedere, which shows genuine feeling with careful finish; and portraits of his parents, now lost. His first important work was painted about the year 1500, when he was twenty-three, "Sacred and Profane Love," now in the Borghese Palace at Rome.