Still confining ourselves to Vasari, we find two other passages bearing on the question: "(_b_) Titian was born in the year 1480 at Cadore.[156] "(_c_) About the year 1507 Giorgione da Castel Franco began to give to his works unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner.... Having seen the manner of Giorgione, Titian early resolved to abandon that of Gian Bellino, although well grounded therein. He now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so closely imitated Giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for those of that master.... At the time when Titian began to adopt the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait," etc.[157] This passage (_c_) makes Titian "not more than eighteen about the year 1507," and fixes the date of his birth as 1489-90, therein agreeing with the previous deduction at which we arrived when examining the passage in Vasari's second edition. Thus in two places out of three Vasari is consistent in fixing 1489-90 as the date. How, then, explain (_b_), which explicitly gives 1480? Anyone conversant with Vasari's inaccuracies will hardly be surprised to find that this statement is dismissed by all Titian's biographers as manifestly a mistake. Moreover, it is inconsistent with the two passages just quoted, and either they are wrong or 1480 is a misprint for 1489. Now, from the nature of the evidence recorded by Vasari, it cannot be a matter for any doubt which is the more trustworthy statement. On the one hand, he speaks as an eye-witness of Titian's old age, and is careful to record the exact year he visited Venice and the age of the painter; on the other hand, he makes a bald statement which he certainly cannot have verified, and which is inconsistent with his own experience! In any case, in Vasari's text the evidence is two to one in favour of 1489-90 as the right date, and thus we come to the agreeable conclusion that our two oldest authorities, Dolce and Vasari, are at one in fixing Titian's birth between 1488 and 1490--in other words, about 1489. So far, then, all is clear, and as we know from later and indisputable evidence that Titian died in 1576, it follows that he only attained the age of eighty-seven and not ninety-nine. Whence, then, comes the story of the ninety-nine years? From none other than Titian himself, and to this piece of evidence we must next turn, following out a strict chronological order. In 1571--that is, three years after Vasari's second edition was published--Titian addresses a letter to Philip the Second of Spain in these terms:[158]