From a Photograph by Naya_.]

The most Bellinesque work of Titian's youth with which we are acquainted
is the curious _Man of Sorrows_ of the Scuola di S. Rocco at Venice, a
work so faded, so injured by restoration that to dogmatise as to its
technique would be in the highest degree unsafe. The type approaches,
among the numerous versions of the _Pietà_ by and ascribed to Giovanni
Bellini, most nearly to that in the Palazzo del Commune at Rimini.
Seeing that Titian was in 1500 twenty-three years old, and a student of
painting of some thirteen years' standing, there may well exist, or at
any rate there may well have existed, from his hand things in a yet
earlier and more distinctively Quattrocento-style than anything with
which we are at present acquainted. This _Man of Sorrows_ itself may
well be a little earlier than 1500, but on this point it is not easy to
form a definite conclusion. Perhaps it is reserved in the future to
some student uniting the qualities of patience and keen insight to do
for the youthful Titian what Morelli and his school have done for
Correggio--that is, to restore to him a series of paintings earlier in
date than those which criticism has, up to the present time, been
content to accept as showing his first independent steps in art.
Everything else that we can at present safely attribute to the youthful
Vecelli is deeply coloured with the style and feeling of Giorgione,
though never, as is the case with the inferior Giorgionesques, so
entirely as to obliterate the strongly marked individuality of the
painter himself. The _Virgin and Child_ in the Imperial Gallery of
Vienna, popularly known as _La Zingarella_, which, by general consent,
is accepted as the first in order of date among the works of this class,
is still to a certain extent Bellinesque in the mode of conception and
arrangement. Yet, in the depth, strength, and richness of the
colour-chord, in the atmospheric spaciousness and charm of the landscape