By his wife, to whom he was not married until two sons had been born, Titian had four children of whom two grew up. Pomponio, to whom we have referred, was the eldest; and he came to a bad end, being a dissipated man. Orazio, who was the second son, became a painter. One daughter died young, and there was another, Lavinia, portraits of whom may be seen at Dresden and Berlin. His great friends were Pietro Aretino, poet and gossip, who laid half Europe under contribution, and was almost as unscrupulous as he was clever, and the sculptor Sansovino. Whatever Titian's faults were as a man, they may fairly be forgotten in his merits as an artist, and it is not the least of these merits that he worked from the time when he was a boy to the hour when his brush seemed falling from his hands, unsparing in his devotion to his task. He has left a legacy to the civilised world that compels a measure of admiration equal to that which is paid to Velazquez. Titian was the supreme master of colour, but, unfortunately, few of his pictures have escaped the restorer's hand, and a great many have been damaged in their journeys from city to city in an age when the art of picture packing was still unknown. Exposure to all sorts of weather, long periods of neglect, careless restoration, and reckless repainting would have been enough to destroy the reputation of most painters, but Titian's work has not suffered to the extent that might have been expected. Enough remains of the master to make us not a little envious of the happy patrons of the arts who knew his work in all its glory. It is hard to say when Titian's life would have come to an end in the ordinary course of events, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that he would have lived to be a centenarian had he retired from Venice when he was ninety and gone to live in Pieve, the well-beloved city that gave him birth. But he would not leave his workshop, and in 1575 the plague paid another visit to Venice. It will be remembered that soon after the League of Cambrai when Titian was in Padua, a visitation had devastated Venice and carried off Giorgione among thousands of lesser men. The Venetians were never free from fear of the plague's return. In 1575 the hand of the plague lay heavy upon the City of Lagoons, where sanitation was unknown, and isolation and disinfection were not practised properly. Historians tell us that some 40,000 people perished, the greatest panic prevailed, and while the plague was at its height Titian died. If his own insinuation of the year of his birth be correct he must have been in his ninety-ninth year, but even if we accept the date given by those who believe that he was born as late as 1482, he would have been within seven years of his centenary. The epidemic is recorded in the famous Church of the Redentore on the Giudecca, dedicated to Christ by the Doge Mocenigo, whose portrait painted by Tintoretto may be seen in the Accademia to-day.