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The Anonimo tells us this "Birth of Paris" was one of Giorgione's early works, a statement worthy of credence from the still Bellinesque stamp and general likeness of one of the Shepherds to the "Adrastus" in the Giovanelli picture.
Two or three years, possibly more, remain unaccounted for, just at a period, too, when the young artist would be most impressionable. I am inclined to think that he may have painted the "Birth of Paris" during these years, but we have only the copy of a part of the composition to go by, and the statement of the Anonimo that the picture was one of Giorgione's early works.
The other offspring of the marriage with Lucia were Francesco, supposed, though without substantial proof, to have been older than his brother, Caterina, and Orsa. At the age of nine, according to Dolce in the Dialogo della Pittura, or of ten, according to Tizianello's Anonimo, Titian was taken from Cadore to Venice, there to enter upon the serious study of painting.
From an often-cited passage in the Anonimo, describing Giorgione's great Venus now in the Dresden Gallery, in the year 1525, when it was in the house of Jeronimo Marcello at Venice, we learn that it was finished by Titian. The text says: "La tela della Venere nuda, che dorme ni uno paese con Cupidine, fu de mano de Zorzo da Castelfranco; ma lo paese e Cupidine furono finiti da Tiziano." The Cupid, irretrievably damaged, has been altogether removed, but the landscape remains, and it certainly shows a strong family resemblance to those which enframe the figures in the Three Ages, Sacred and Profane Love, and the "Noli me tangere" of the National Gallery. The same Anonimo in 1530 saw in the house of Gabriel Vendramin at Venice a Dead Christ supported by an Angel, from the hand of Giorgone, which, according to him, had been retouched by Titian. It need hardly be pointed out, at this stage, that the work thus indicated has nothing in common with the coarse and thoroughly second-rate Dead Christ supported by Child-Angels, still to be seen at the Monte di Piet
Vasari shows us a Giorgione angry because he has been complimented by friends on the superior beauty of some work on the "facciata di verso la Merceria," which in reality belongs to Titian, and thereupon implacably cutting short their connection and friendship. This version is confirmed by Dolce, but refuted by the less contemporary authority of Tizianello's Anonimo.
Among others we find a contemporary Tiziano Vecelli, who is a lawyer of note concerned in the administration of Cadore, keeping up a kind of obsequious friendship with his famous cousin at Venice. The Tizianello who, in 1622, dedicated to the Countess of Arundel an anonymous Life of Titian known as Tizianello's Anonimo, and died at Venice in 1650, was Titian's cousin thrice removed.
Not a bit of it. They come under the head of Giorgionismo. The little ones, according to him, are the work of Anonimo; the larger ones were painted by Romanino. But whether or not Giorgione painted any or all, the irrefutable fact remains that but for his genius and influence they would never have existed. He showed the way. The eyes of that beautiful sad pagan shine wistfully through.
All modern critics are agreed that Morelli has here mistaken an old copy after Giorgione for an original, a mistake we may readily pardon in consideration of the successful identification he has made of these figures with the Shepherds, in the composition seen and described by the Anonimo in 1525 as the "Birth of Paris," by Giorgione.
And here we are at the sign of `Apollo and the Razor. Apollo, you see, is bestowing the razor on the Triptolemus of our craft, the first reaper of beards, the sublime Anonimo, whose mysterious identity is indicated by a shadowy hand." "I see thou hast had custom already, Sandro," continued Nello, addressing a solemn-looking dark-eyed youth, who made way for them on the threshold.
How Giorgione has revelled in the glories of the setting sun, the long shadows of the evening twilight, the tall-stemmed trees, the moss-grown rock! This work was seen by the Anonimo in 1525, in the house of Taddeo Contarini at Venice. It was then believed to have been completed by Sebastiano del Piombo, Giorgione's pupil.
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