One day he met Aretino in the street, stopped him, and proposed to paint his portrait. The blackmailer was delighted, as the picture would cost him nothing and would certainly be valuable, and he at once made an appointment to go to Jacopo’s studio. On the appointed day he appeared punctually, and seeing an empty canvas ready for the portrait, sat down in a becoming attitude. But the painter’s turn had come. ‘Stand up!’ he said, and Aretino obeyed. Then Tintoretto pulled out a long horse-pistol. ‘What is this?’ asked Aretino, alarmed. ‘I am going to measure you,’ replied the artist, and he proceeded to measure his adversary by the length of the pistol. ‘You are two pistols and a half high,’ he observed; ‘now go!’ and he pointed to the door. Aretino was badly frightened, and lost no time in getting out of the house; and from that day he neither wrote nor spoke any word that was not flattering to Jacopo Tintoretto. Aretino received another lesson one day from the famous Andrea Calmo. The latter was an extremely original personage, half man of letters, half actor, whose improvised speeches in the character of Pantaloon were so remarkable as to give rise to the mistaken belief that he had invented that mask. He also wrote open letters to prominent men, as Aretino did, and published them, and as his were quite as libellous as the Tuscan’s, and sometimes even more witty, they had [Sidenote: _Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act iv. sc. 2 (Cambridge edition, 1863)._] an immense success. In fifty years they went through fifty editions, and there is positive proof that Shakespeare was acquainted with them, for he quotes a line and a half from one of Calmo’s works:-- Venetia, Venetia, Chi non ti vede non ti pretia. Calmo’s chief virtue was neither patience nor forbearance, and it appears that Aretino irritated him exceedingly. One day his nerves could [Sidenote: _Molmenti, Studi, and Nuovi Studi._] bear no longer with the Tuscan, and he gave vent to his feelings in an ironical open letter addressed to the object of his dislike. Here is a fragment of it:-- ‘You are not a rational, natural human being, but aërial, celestial, deified, a devout man and a calm one, esteemed by all, adorned with every treasure and with all the virtues that no one being possesses, from the East to the West. You are the temple of poetry, the theatre of invention, a very sea of comparisons--and you behave in such a manner as to scare even the dead!’ Titian’s other friend, Jacopo Sansovino, the celebrated architect, was also a Tuscan by birth, but was of quite another stamp. His youth had been wild, but he had then married a woman of great beauty and refinement whose name was Paola, and who completely dominated him. The couple were often seen at the house at San Cassian, as Titian and Cecilia his wife often visited them in their dwelling in Saint Mark’s Square close by the clock tower.