There were pearls to be selected, one by one, in visits innumerable to the Fondaco dei Turchi, where the finest of such treasures were not secured at a first asking, and in these his mother was a connoisseur; but there were many more anxious visits to Murano, to be assured that no step in the fashioning of his gift was endangering its perfection.

Heft i. ZANETTI, A. "Varie Pitture," etc., with engravings of some fragments from the Fondaco de' Tedeschi frescoes, 1760.

This building, known as the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, occupying one of the finest sites on the Grand Canal, was rebuilt by order of the Signoria, and Giorgione received the commission to decorate the façade with frescoes.

The Fondaco still stands to-day, but, alas!

It is true that Giorgione spent time and energy over fresco painting, and from the very publicity of such work as the frescoes on the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, he came to be widely known in this direction, but it is infinitely probable that his output in other branches was enormous.

The date of the frescoes on the Fondaco de' Tedeschi is known to be 1507-8, but, as nothing remains but a few patches of colour in one spot high up over the Grand Canal, we have no visible clue to guide us in our estimate of their artistic worth.

Everything, on the contrary, points to Titian's evolution being anything but rapid; in fact, so far as records go, there is no mention of his name until he painted the façade of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi in company with Giorgione in 1507.

Morto da Feltre is mentioned by Vasari as having assisted Giorgione in the decoration of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi.

Titian then drawing and painting with Giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished in art, that when Giorgione was painting the façade of the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, or Exchange of the German Merchants, which looks towards the Grand Canal, Titian was allotted the other side which faces the market-place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old.

" Fortunately, the exact date can be fixed when the frescoes on the Fondaco de' Tedeschi were painted, for we have original records preserved from which we learn the work was begun in 1507 and completed towards the close of 1508.

When Dolce says that Titian painted with Giorgione at the Fondaco, "non avendo egli allora appena venti anni," he is only trying to make out that his hero, here as everywhere, was a most unusual person (the whole dialogue is a glorification of the master).

Vasari mentions first the birth and upbringing of the boy, then he speaks of Giorgione and the Fondaco frescoes, and goes on: "dopo la quale opera fece un quadro grande che oggi è nella salla di messer Andrea Loredano....

That Titian's name does not occur in the documents about the Fondaco frescoes may be due to the fact that Giorgione alone was commissioned to undertake the frescoes for the magistrates, and that the latter painter in his turn brought his associate Titian into the work.

Let us then enlarge Dr. Gronau's table by this additional statement, and further complete it by including the earliest piece of evidence, the statement of Dolce in 1557 that Titian was scarcely twenty when he worked at the Fondaco de' Tedeschi frescoes (1507-8).