Undoubtedly the figure of the saint is strongly reminiscent of Bellini's style, as is the pose of the pope. The latter's features were evidently copied from a medal or other image, so he is much less lively in appearance than the bishop, who was probably painted from live sittings. The tablet at centre bottom is a later addition, which identifies the artist and explains the subject (in notably vague terms), reading "Ritratto di uno di casa Pesaro in Venetia che fu fatto generale di S.ta Chiesa. Tiziano F.[ecit]" ("Portrait of one of the Pesaro family of Venice who was made a general of the holy church. Titian made this"). Despite some faults in the painting, Pesaro must been sufficiently satisfied to commission Titian in 1518–19 to paint the important Pesaro Altarpiece, still in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, a key work in the artist's development, which again dwells on his victory in 1502. Dating Traditionally dated to 1506–1511, there have been suggestions that instead it belongs to 1503–1506, which would make it the earliest surviving work by the artist, then less than twenty years old on the usual dating for his undocumented birth, which is 1588–90. But older estimates for his birthdate were usually earlier, and a date of 1503, meaning an artist of 13 or 14, seems barely credible. An early date was backed by Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (d. 1897), Adolfo Venturi (d. 1941) and Gronau and opposed by Pallucchini, Roberto Longhi and Morassi, among others. Hourticq dates it to 1515 (assuming an official intervention by Giovanni Bellini) and Suida to between 1512 and 1520. X-rays, however, have revealed a uniform colour texture, contradicting hypotheses that it was a draft expanded over time by several hands. Restoration shortly before 2003 has confirmed that it relates more closely to "the monumental style Titian developed around 1510-11". It has been claimed that it must have been commissioned in the immediate aftermath of the battle and before 1503, since the militaristic pope Alexander VI died that year and from then on he was banned from official representations, in a kind of damnatio memoriae. However Pesaro did not return to Venice until 1506, and if the prohibition on images ever affected Venice, it is unlikely to have done in 1508–1510, when Venice and the Papacy were on opposite sides in the War of the League of Cambrai. While Alexander was