Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/49

TITIAN 227 perienced men to anticipate the excellence to which he afterward attained. At the time when Titian began to adopt the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and this was considered very beautiful, the coloring being true and natural, and the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted as might also the stitches in a satin doublet, painted in the same work ; it was so well and carefully done, that it would have been taken for a picture by Giorgione, if Titian had not written his name on the dark ground. Giorgione meanwhile had executed the facade of the German Exchange ; when, by the intervention of Barberigo, Titian' was appointed to paint certain stories in the same building and over the Merceria. After which he executed a picture with figures the size of life, which is now in the Hall of Messer Andrea Loredano, who dwells near San Marcuola; this work represents "Our Lady" in her flight into Egypt. She is in the midst of a great wood, and the landscape of this picture is well done ; Titian having practised that branch of art, and keep- ing certain Germans, who were excellent masters therein, for several months to- gether in his own house. Within the wood he depicted various animals, all painted from the life, and so natural as to seem almost alive. In the house of Messer Giovanni Danna, a Flemish gentleman and merchant, who was his gossip, he painted a portrait which appears to breathe, with an " Ecce Homo," comprising numerous figures which, by Titian himself, as well as others, is considered to be a very good work. The same artist executed a picture of " Our Lady," with other figures the size of life, men and children being all taken from nature, and portraits of persons belonging to the Danna family. In the year 1507, when the Emperor M-aximilian was making war on the Venetians, Titian, as he relates himself, painted the "Angel Raphael, with Tobit and a Dog," in the Church of San Marziliano. There is a distant land- scape in this picture, wherein San Giovanni Battista is seen at prayer in a wood ; he is looking up to heaven, and his face is illumined by alight descending thence ; some believe this picture to have been done before that on the " Exchange of the Germans," mentioned above, was commenced. Now, it chanced that certain gen- tlemen, not knowing that Giorgione no longer worked at this facade, and that Titian was doing 'it (nay, had already given that part over the Merceria to pub- lic view), met the former, and began as friends to rejoice with him, declaring that he was acquitting himself better on the side of the Merceria than he had done on that of the " Grand Canal ; " which remark caused Giorgione so much vexation, that he would scarcely permit himself to be seen until the whole work was completed, and Titian had become generally known as the painter ; nor did he thenceforward hold any intercourse with the latter and they were no longer friends. In the year 1508, Titian published a wood-engraving of the "Triumph of Faith ;" it comprised a vast number of figures : our first Parents, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Sybils, the Innocents, the Martyrs, the Apostles, and Our Sa viour Christ borne in triumph by the four Evangelists, and the four Doctors, fol-