Tiziano, the son of Gregorio Vecelli, was born at Piave, the principal of Cadore on the Alpine verge of Friuli, 1477.[144] His education is said to have been learned, and Giov. Battista Egnazio is named as his master in Latin and Greek;[145] but his proficiency may be doubted, for if it be true that his irresistible bent to the art obliged the father to send him in his tenth year to the school of Giov. Bellini at Venice, he could be little more than an infant when he learnt the rudiments under Sebastiano Zuccati.[146] At such an age, and under these masters, he acquired a power of copying the visible detail of the objects before him with that correctness of eye and fidelity of touch which distinguishes his imitation at every period of his art. Thus when, more adult, in emulation of Albert Durer, he painted at Ferrara[147] Christ to whom a Pharisee shows the tribute money, he out-stript in subtlety of touch even that hero of minuteness: the hair of the heads and hands may be counted, the pores of the skin discriminated, and the surrounding objects seen reflected in the pupils of the eyes; yet the effect of the whole is not impaired by this extreme finish: it increases it at a distance, which effaces the fac-similisms of Albert, and assists the beauties of imitation with which that work abounds to a degree seldom attained, and never excelled by the master himself, who has left it indeed as a single monument, for it has no companion, to attest his power of combining the extremes of finish and effect. GIACOMO ROBUSTI, SURNAMED IL TINTORETTO. 1512-1594. "It might almost be said that vice is the virtue of the Venetian school, because it rests its prerogative on despatch in execution, and therefore is proud of Tintoretto, who had no other merit."[148] Such, in speaking of the great genius before us, is the equally rash, ignorant, unphilosophic verdict of a man exclusively dubbed "The Philosophic Painter." G. Robusti of Venice was the son of a dyer, who left him that byname as an heir-loom.[149] He entered the school of Tiziano when yet a boy; but he, soon discovering in the daring spirit of his nursling the symptoms of a genius which threatened future rivalship to his own powers, with that suspicious meanness which marks his character as an artist, after a short interval, ordered his head pupil, Girolamo Dante, to dismiss the boy; but as envy generally defeats its own designs, the uncourteous dismissal, instead of dispiriting, roused the energies of the heroic stripling, who, after some meditation on his future course, and comparing his master's superiority in _colour_ with his defects in _form_, resolved to surpass him by an union of both: the method best suited to accomplish this he fancied to find in an intense study of Michael Angelo's style, and boldly announced his plan by writing on the door of his study, THE DESIGN OF M. ANGELO, AND THE COLOUR OF TIZIAN.