Titian

Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, was born in Pieve di Cadore in the Alps north of Venice presumably between 1488 and 1490.

He is regarded as one of the greatest Italian Renaissance painters of the Venetian school.

Titian was talented in all aspects of the painter’s art. He was in great demand as a portraitist all over Europe and he painted a lot of religious compositions as well as mythological ones.

At the age of nine he went to Venice with his brother and soon went to Giovanni Bellini’s workshop. There he met another of Bellini’s students, Giorgione, with whom he worked together, among other things, on his first certain work, the frescoes of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in 1508.

The first independent commission of Titian was for the frescoes of three miracles of St. Anthony of Padua.

In the early 1520s Titian had a liaison with Cecilia, a woman from Cadore, with whom he had two sons, Pomponio born in 1524, who became a priest later, and Orazio, born in 1525, who became a painter. Titian married Cecilia during her heavy illness in 1525. She recovered and lived another five years in which she gave birth to two daughters, but only one, Lavinia, survived. In 1531 he moved to a Venetian palace, known as the Casa Grande.

One of Titian's triumphs was his trip to Bologna to attend the coronation of Charles V as Holy Roman emperor in 1530. There he painted the portrait Charles V in Armour. The earliest surviving portrait of Charles V by Titian, however, is Charles V with a Hound, painted in February 1533, today exhibited in Madrid. Charles V was very pleased with Titian’s work and therefore honored him by making him a knight.

Another great event in Titian's life was his visit to Rome from 1545 until 1546, at the invitation of Pope Paul III, where he saw the archaeological remains of ancient Rome, as well as the Renaissance masterpieces of Raphael and Michelangelo.

In January 1548 he went to Augsburg at the invitation of the earlier mentioned Charles V, where he created one of his most memorable works, Charles V at Mühlberg, today in Madrid. In December 1548 Charles V instructed Titian to come to Milan and paint Prince Philip. In 1550 then, however, Charles obligated Titian to travel to Augsburg again. He stayed there for one year and executed one of his most important state portraits, the Philip II.

There were a lot of masterpieces in portraiture created by Titian throughout his life.

In 1551 Titian returned to Venice and stayed there for the rest of his life. He died on August 27, 1576 and was interred in the Church of Sta. Maria dei Frari.

For more information go to:

Link

To see all his works go to:

Link 2