Following the usual order, I shall now proceed to describe the imitators of Titian; by no means so excellent a master as an artist. Whether disliking the interruption and tediousness attaching to such a character, or apprehensive of meeting with a rival, he was always averse to affording his instructions. He was extremely harsh with Paris Bordone, and even entered into decided hostility against him, an artist who burned with an ambition to resemble him. He banished Tintoret from his studio, and artfully directed his own brother to mercantile pursuits, though he displayed uncommon talents for painting. "Hence," observes Vasari, "there are few who can really be called his disciples, inasmuch as he taught little; but each learned more or less according as he knew how to avail himself of the productions of Titian." His family of itself enumerated several artists, the series of whom may be seen at Cadore, and in part at the adjacent city of Belluno. There, too, contemporary with the Vecellj, flourished one Niccolo di Stefano, a painter deserving of commendation, no less for having competed with the family of Titian, than for the reputation he acquired in such competition. His rivals among the Vecellj, were Francesco, the brother, and Orazio, a son of Titian, who approached him pretty nearly in point of style. They devoted, however, little attention to the arts, one of them having duties of a military and mercantile nature to discharge, and the other having thrown away much of his time and fortune upon the idle pursuit of alchemy. Several pictures by Francesco are to be seen at San Salvatore, in Venice, consisting of a tolerably well executed Magdalen, appearing at the feet of Christ risen, at Oriago, on the banks of the river Brenta, and a grand Nativity of our Lord, at San Giuseppe, in Belluno, which, until lately, was esteemed a fine specimen of Titian, when Monsignor Doglioni traced it by authentic documents to its real author. The production, however, which gave rise to Titian's jealousy, was the altarpiece at San Vito, in Cadore, in which, among the other saints, he represented the figure of the denominator of the town, in a military dress. Orazio was considered a good portrait painter, even so far as to rival his father; and he likewise painted, for the public palace a history piece, very beautiful, though retouched by Titian's hand, which has since perished by fire. I find no account of Pomponio, another son of Titian's, having applied himself to the art, though he survived both his father and brother, who both died in the same year, and dissipated his inheritance.