It was purchased in the year indicated in the inscription by François I., who added it to his collection at Fontainebleau, whence it was removed by Louis XIV. to Versailles. The canvas, which has been a good deal injured, has at some time been cut into three pieces. The name by which this artist is generally known was derived from the office which he held late in life at the Papal Court. There he forsook the traditions of his native school and gradually came under the influence of Michelangelo. In Rome he also met Raphael, who was much impressed by his colour schemes: the _St. John the Baptist in the Desert_ (No. 1500), here catalogued under the name of Raphael, and a few pictures similarly attributed in other galleries, were painted by Sebastiano in his Roman manner. A prominent place among the less important artists generally included in this school must be accorded to Cariani (1480?-1547?). A large proportion of the pictures of this Bergamask painter usually pass under more imposing names, and it is a remarkable fact that we do not find any work attributed to him in the official Catalogue. He, however, painted a _Holy Family_ (No. 1135), here assigned to Giorgione, as well as the _Madonna and Child and St. Sebastian_ (No. 1159) given to Giovanni Bellini. The _Portrait of Two Men_ (No. 1156), which for no very apparent reason was once regarded as the portraits of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, must be by Cariani, although still placed to the credit of Gentile. Another of the less efficient pupils of Giovanni Bellini was Niccolò Rondinelli (fl. 1480-1500), whose _Madonna and Child, St. Peter, and St. Sebastian_ (No. 1158) masquerades as a work by Giovanni Bellini, whose full name, IOANNES BELLINVS, is inscribed in capitals (not, however, placed in a _cartellino_) on the parapet which runs across the front of the panel. TITIAN Although we have only limited space to deal with the differences of the critics as to the probable date of Titian’s birth, we may point out that it was, until recent times, placed in the year 1477. Mr. Herbert Cook has, however, put forward a very strong case in favour of the year 1489, pointing out the remarkable fact that there is no record of Titian earlier than Dec. 2, 1511, or, according to the usual chronology, until he was thirty-five years of age! Again, L. Dolce, in 1557, wrote that Titian was “scarcely twenty years old when Giorgione was painting the façade of the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi”; and we know that Titian was his assistant on that work in 1507-8. Vasari also asserts, as Mr. Cook reminds us, that the famous Venetian was “about seventy-six years old in 1566-67,” when he visited him in Venice. No reliance is to be placed on the date contained in the well-known letter which Titian addressed to Philip II. in 1571, as he evidently had a motive in referring to himself as “an old servant of ninety-five.” There is, however, no doubt that Titian died in 1576.