Commonly called by the anglicised form of his Christian name, Titian, was born at Cadore, near Venice, in 1477. His studies in art began at the age of ten, under a painter named Zuccato, from whose studio he passed to Gentile Bellini’s, and from his again to that of his brother Giovanni. Space forbids us to do more than indicate the chief landmarks in Titian’s long, eventful, and illustrious life. When his reputation as a great artist was new, before he was thirty years old, he visited the court of Ferrara, and executed for the duke two of his earliest masterpieces, the “Tribute Money,” now at Dresden, and the “Bacchus and Ariadne,” in the National Gallery of London. In 1516 he painted his great altarpiece, the “Assumption,” now removed from its church to the Accademia at Venice, and was at once placed by this incomparable work in the highest rank of painters. The “Entombment” of the Louvre was painted about 1523; and in 1528 he executed another magnificent altarpiece, the “Death of St. Peter Martyr,” in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, which was destroyed in the fire of 1867. In 1530 Titian was invited to Bologna, to paint the portrait of the Emperor Charles V.; and he is supposed by some writers to have accompanied the emperor shortly afterward to Spain. Owing to the patronage which Charles V. and his son Philip II. liberally conferred on the artist, Madrid possesses a collection of his works second in number and importance only to the treasures of Venice. The “Presentation in the Temple,” in the Accademia at Venice, dates from about 1539, and the “Christ at Emmaus,” in the Louvre, from about 1546. In 1545 he painted at Rome the celebrated portrait of “Pope Paul III.,” in the Naples Museum. Titian continued active in his art even up to the time of his death, which occurred in 1576, at the great age of ninety-nine. His style, as is to be expected, changed considerably in the course of his long life, and the pictures painted in his last years, though full of color, are infirm in drawing and execution; in the full vigor of his powers he was a draughtsman second to none, though never aiming at the select beauty of form attained by the Florentine school, and by Raphael. It was this that led Michelangelo to say that, with a better mode of study, “This man might have been as eminent in design as he is true to nature and masterly in counterfeiting the life, and then, nothing could be desired better or more perfect;” adding, “for he has an exquisite perception, and a delightful spirit and manner.”