Francesco and Titian Vecelli developed at an early age a marked feeling for painting, and in order that they might have every chance of developing their gifts to the best advantage, Gregorio Vecelli took them to Venice, which lay some seventy miles from Pieve, and left them with a brother who had sufficient influence to secure for Titian admission to the studios of the brothers Bellini, who then shared with the Vivarini family the highest position in the art world of the Republic. Gian Bellini, then a man past middle age, had in his studio several pupils who were destined to achieve distinction. Palma Vecchio, Sebastian del Piombo, and Giorgione of Castelfranco were among them, and of these the last named was certainly the greatest. It is probable that, had he lived, even Titian Vecelli must have toiled after him in vain, for he influenced his fellow-student to an extent that is very clearly revealed in the early pictures, and has even led to confusion between the work of the two men, a confusion greatly increased by the fact that Titian completed some of the pictures that Giorgione left unfinished. Happily perhaps for Titian, though unfortunately for the world at large, Giorgione was destined to fall a victim to one of the plagues that ravaged Venice from time to time, and he died soon after completing his thirtieth year, leaving Titian undisputed master of Venetian painting. Like all great men Titian was an assimilator. In his early days he started out under the influence of Bellini. Then he surrendered, as even his aged master did, to the strange, rare, and beautiful spirit of poetry and romance that Giorgione brought into art. He may have helped to develop and strengthen it, for he and Giorgione worked and lived together. Finally when outside influences had died down Titian found himself, and this was the greatest discovery of his life. In the last years of Giorgione's short career he and Titian, both young men, were engaged to decorate the great Commercial House of the Germans, rebuilt upon the site of the older building that had been destroyed by fire about the beginning of the year 1505. The work would appear to have been started two years later. This united effort, purely decorative, must have been worthy of its surroundings at a time when Venice and beauty were almost synonymous terms; the greater part is lost to us to-day.