He was born in 1518, in the ninth year of our Henry VIII's reign, the son of a dyer, or tintore, named Battista Robusti, and since the young Jacopo Robusti helped his father in his trade he was called the little dyer, or il tintoretto.

His father was well to do, and the boy had enough leisure to enable him to copy and to frequent the arcades of S.Mark's Square, under which such artists as were too poor to afford studios were allowed to work.
The greatest name in Venetian art at that time, and indeed still, was that of Titian, and Tintoretto was naturally anxious to become his pupil.

Titian was by many years Tintoretto's senior when, at the age of seventeen, the little dyer obtained leave to study under him.

The story has it that so masterly were Tintoretto's early drawings that Titian, fearing rivalry, refused to teach him any longer.

Whether this be true or not, and one dislikes to think of Titian in this way, Tintoretto left the studio and was thrown upon his own resources and ambition.
Fortunately he did not need money: he was able even to form a collection of casts from the antique and also from Michael Angelo, the boy's other idol, who when Tintoretto was seventeen was sixty-one.