Garcia Hernandez, the Spanish Envoy, writes: "According to some people
who knew him, Titian was about ninety years old, though he did not show
it." Now, if Titian was really about ninety in the year 1564, he will
have lived to the age of one hundred and two, a feat of longevity of
which no one has ever accused him! Apart, therefore, from the healthy
scepticism which Hernandez betrays in this letter, we may certainly
conclude that "some people who knew him" were exaggerating Titian's age.
Secondly, Titian's letter of 1571 says he is ninety-five years old.
Titian's similar letter of 1576, the year of his death, omits to say he
is one hundred. Surely a strange omission, considering that he refers to
his old age three times in this one letter.[172] Does not the second
letter correct the inexactness of the first? and so Titian's statement
goes for nothing?
The collective evidence, then, of these Spanish letters amounts to this,
that, in the words of the Envoy, "for money everything was to be had of
Titian," and accordingly any statement as to his great age when thus
made for effect must be treated with the greatest suspicion.
But is the evidence of Dolce and Vasari any more trustworthy? Dr. Gronau
is at pains to show that both these writers often made mistakes in
their dates, a fact which no one can dispute. Their very incorrectness
is the more reason however for trusting them in this instance, for they
happen to agree about the date of Titian's birth; and, although neither
of them expressly gives the year 1489, they indicate separate and
independent events in his life, the one, Dolce, at the beginning, the
other, Vasari, at the end, which when looked into give the same result.
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