Titian

For other uses, see Titian (disambiguation).

"Tiziano" redirects here. For other uses, see Tiziano (disambiguation).

Titian
Self-Portrait, c. 1567, now housed in Museo del Prado in Madrid
Born	Tiziano Vecellio c. 1488/90 Pieve di Cadore, Republic of Venice
Died	27 August 1576(1576-08-27) (aged 87–88) Venice, Republic of Venice
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Artist
Movement	Venetian school
Signature

Tiziano Vecellio (Italian: [titˈtsjaːno veˈtʃɛlljo]; c. 1477/88/90 – 27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian (/ˈtɪʃən/ ^ⓘ TISH-ən), was an Italian Renaissance painter, the most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno.

Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, exerted a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western artists.

His career was successful from the start, and he became sought after by patrons, initially from Venice and its possessions, then joined by the north Italian princes, and finally the Habsburgs and papacy. Along with Giorgione, he is considered a founder of the Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painting. According to Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, the painter and art theorist, writing in 1590, Titian was "the sun amidst small stars not only among the Italians but all the painters of the world".

During his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically, but he retained a lifelong interest in colour. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, they are remarkable and original in their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone.

Biography

Early years

A Man with a Quilted Sleeve, c. 1509, National Gallery, London

The exact time or date of Titian's birth is uncertain. When he was an old man he claimed in a letter to Philip II of Spain, to have been born in 1474, but this seems most unlikely. Other writers contemporary to his old age give figures that would equate to birth dates between 1473 and after 1482. Most modern scholars believe a date between 1488 and 1490 is more likely, though his age at death being 99 had been accepted into the 20th century.

He was the son of Gregorio Vecellio and his wife Lucia, of whom little is known. The Vecellio family was well-established in the area, which was ruled by Venice. Titian's grandfather Conte Vecellio was a prominent notary who held a number of offices in the local administration. Three of Conte's sons were notaries, not including Gregorio, who was active as a soldier and closely assciated with the Venetian Arsenal, but worked mainly as a timber merchant and also managed mines in the mountainous Cadore region for their owners.

Ludovico Dolce, who knew Titian, says that Titian had four masters, the first being Sebastiano Zuccato, the second Gentile Bellini, then his brother Giovanni Bellini, and last, Giorgione. No documentation for these relationships has been found. The Zucatti family of artists are best known as mosaicists, but there is no evidence that the painter Sebastiano Zuccato himself was active as a mosaicist, although Joannides says he probably was. According to Giorgio Vasari, who also knew Titian and included a not always accurrate biography of the artist in his Lives, Titian first studied under Giovanni Bellini. Dolce writes that the boy was sent to Venice at age nine, along with his brother Francesco, to live with an uncle and apprentice to Sebastiano Zuccato. Leaving Zuccato, Titian briefly transferred to the studio of Gentile Bellini, one of the largest and most productive workshops in Venice. Following Gentile’s death in 1507 he entered into an apprenticeship with Gentile's younger brother Giovanni, acknowledged by contemporaries as the preeminent Venetian painter of the day. As there is no documentation of Titian's work before 1510, there is no way to know which version, Dolce's or Vasari's, is closer to the truth. Living in the city, Titian found a group of young men about his own age, among them Giovanni Palma da Serinalta, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano Luciani, and Giorgio da Castelfranco, nicknamed Giorgione. Francesco Vecellio, Titian's older brother, while more workmanlike in his approach to painting and lacking Titian's talent, was able to achieve some notice in his home town of Cadore and the Bellunese area around it.

Giorgio Martinioni mentions in his edition (1663) of Sansovino's guide to Venice a fresco of Hercules painted by Titian above the entrance to the Morosini house, a painting that would have been one of his earliest works, although a year later Marco Boschini rejected this attribution. Others attributed to his early years were the Bellini-esque so-called Gypsy Madonna in Vienna, and The Visitation from the monastery of Sant'Andrea, now in the Accademia, Venice. According to Joannides, features of the Visitation's execution such as the painter's deployment of light to stress the two pregnant women and the focus on colouristic values are qualities to be found in the earliest of Titian's works, and its attribution to him is supported as well by its dramatic expression of movement and the geometry of the arrangement of visual elements on the canvas.

A Man with a Quilted Sleeve is an early portrait, painted around 1509 and described by Giorgio Vasari in 1568. Scholars long believed it depicted Ludovico Ariosto, but now think it is of Gerolamo Barbarigo. Rembrandt had seen A Man with a Quilted Sleeve at auction, and drew a thumbnail sketch of it. Later he was able to examine the painting more closely in the home of the Sicilian merchant Ruffio, who had bought it. The work inspired the Dutch artist to sketch his own self-portrait in 1639 and then to make a similar etching, followed by a self-portrait in oils in 1640.

Titian joined Giorgione as an assistant, but many contemporary critics already found Titian's work more impressive—for example, in exterior frescoes (now almost totally destroyed) that they collaborated on for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (state-warehouse for the German merchants). Their relationship evidently contained a significant element of rivalry. Distinguishing between their works during this period remains a subject of scholarly controversy. A substantial number of attributions have moved from Giorgione to Titian in the 20th century, with little traffic the other way. One of the earliest known Titian works, Christ Carrying the Cross in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, depicting the Ecce Homo scene, was long regarded as by Giorgione.

Sacred and Profane Love,1514, Galleria Borghese, Rome

In 1507–1508, Giorgione was commissioned by the state to create frescoes on the recently rebuilt Fondaco dei Tedeschi, which stood next to the Rialto bridge facing the Grand Canal. Titian and Morto da Feltre worked alongside him. Giorgione painted the facade facing the canal in 1508, while Titian painted the facade above the street, probably in 1509. Only some badly damaged fragments of the paintings remain. Some of their work is known, in part, through the engravings of Fontana. After Giorgione's early death in 1510, Titian continued to paint Giorgionesque subjects for some time, though his style developed its own features, including the bold and expressive brushwork so characteristic of his later years.

Allegory of Sacred Love (detail of Sacred and Profane Love)

Titian's talent in fresco is shown in those he painted in 1511 at Padua in the Carmelite church and in the Scuola del Santo, some of which have been preserved, among them the Meeting at the Golden Gate, and three scenes (Miracoli di sant'Antonio) from the life of St. Anthony of Padua, Murder of a Young Woman by Her Husband, which depicts The Miracle of the Jealous Husband, A Child Testifying to Its Mother's Innocence, and The Saint Healing the Young Man with a Broken Limb. The Resurrected Christ (Uffizi) also dates to 1511-1512.

In 1512 Titian returned to Venice from Padua; in 1513 he obtained La Senseria (a profitable privilege much coveted by artists) in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. He became superintendent of the government works, especially charged with completing the paintings left unfinished by Giovanni Bellini in the hall of the great council in the ducal palace. He set up an atelier on the Grand Canal at S. Samuele, the precise site being now unknown. It was not until 1516, after the death of Giovanni Bellini, that he came into actual enjoyment of his patent. At the same time he entered an exclusive arrangement for painting. The patent yielded him a good annuity of 20 crowns and exempted him from certain taxes. In return, he was bound to paint likenesses of the successive Doges of his time at the fixed price of eight crowns each. The actual number he painted was five.

Growth

During this period (1516–1530), which may be called the period of his mastery and maturity, the artist moved on from his early Giorgionesque style, undertook larger, more complex subjects, and for the first time attempted a monumental style. Giorgione died in 1510 and Giovanni Bellini in 1516, while Sebastiano del Piombo had gone to Rome, leaving Titian unrivaled in the Venetian School.For sixty years he was the undisputed master of Venetian painting.

Assumption of the Virgin, 1516–1518; it took Titian more than two years to complete this painting in the Frari church in Venice

In 1516, he completed his famous masterpiece, the Assumption of the Virgin, for the high altar of the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, where it is still in situ. This piece of colourism, executed on a grand scale rarely before seen in Italy, created a sensation. The Signoria took note and observed that Titian was neglecting his work in the hall of the great council, but in 1516 he succeeded his master Giovanni Bellini in receiving a pension from the Senate.

Merchants in the Dalmatian city of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, commissioned a polyptych The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Titian and his workshop, now on the high altar of the cathedral in Ragusa, as well as a recently restored painting by Titian depicting St Blaise, Mary Magdalene, the Archangel Raphael and Tobias in the Dubrovnik Dominican convent.

The pictorial structure of the Assumption—that of uniting in the same composition two or three scenes superimposed on different levels, earth and heaven, the temporal and the infinite—was continued in a series of works such as the retable of San Domenico at Ancona (1520), the retable of Brescia (1522), and the retable of San Niccolò (1523), in the Vatican Museums, each time attaining to a higher and more perfect conception. He finally reached a classic formula in the Pesaro Madonna, better known as the Madonna di Ca' Pesaro (c. 1519–1526), also for the Frari church. This is perhaps his most studied work, whose patiently developed plan is set forth with supreme display of order and freedom, originality and style. Here Titian gave a new conception of the traditional groups of donors and holy persons moving in aerial space, the plans and different degrees set in an architectural framework.

Titian was then at the height of his fame, and towards 1521, following the production of a figure of St. Sebastian for the papal legate in Brescia (of which there are numerous replicas), purchasers pressed for his work.

To this period belongs a more extraordinary work, The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr (1530), formerly in the Dominican Church of San Zanipolo, and destroyed by a fire in 1867. Only copies and engravings of this proto-Baroque picture remain. It combined extreme violence and a landscape, mostly consisting of a great tree, that pressed into the scene and seems to accentuate the drama in a way that presages the Baroque.

The artist simultaneously continued a series of small Madonnas, which he placed amid beautiful landscapes, in the manner of genre pictures or poetic pastorals. The Virgin with the Rabbit, in the Louvre, is the finished type of these pictures. Another work of the same period, also in the Louvre, is the Entombment. This was also the period of the three large and famous mythological scenes for the camerino of Alfonso d'Este in Ferrara, The Bacchanal of the Andrians and the Worship of Venus in the Museo del Prado and the Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23) in London, "perhaps the most brilliant productions of the neo-pagan culture or 'Alexandrianism' of the Renaissance, many times imitated but never surpassed even by Rubens himself." Finally this was the period when Titian composed the half-length figures and busts of young women, such as Flora in the Uffizi and Woman with a Mirror (or Woman at Her Toilet) in the Louvre. There is some evidence that prostitutes were used as models by Titian and other painters of the time, including some of Venice's famous courtesans. In Syson's view, if this practice was generally known in 16th-century Venetian society, it might have influenced the "reactions and interpretations" by some of the paintings' owners and those who viewed them.

Maturity

Bacchus and Ariadne, c. 1520–1523. National Gallery, London.

Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–1523), depicts Ariadne, a Cretan princess abandoned by Theseus, whose ship is shown in the distance and who has just left her at the Greek island of Naxos, at the moment when Bacchus arrives. Bacchus, falling immediately in love with Ariadne, leaps from his chariot, drawn by two cheetahs, to be near her. In the mythical love story, Ariadne is frightened by the wine god's raucous retinue and runs away. Bacchus wins her over and they are married, following which he creates from her jewelled wedding crown the constellation of the Corona Borealis, whose stars Titian places in the upper left of the sky to symbolize their eternal love. The painting belongs to a series commissioned from Bellini, Titian, and Dosso Dossi, for the Camerino d'Alabastro (Alabaster Room) in the Ducal Palace, Ferrara, by Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, who in 1510 tried to commission Michelangelo and Raphael for the series.

During the next period (1530–1550), Titian developed the style introduced by his dramatic Death of St. Peter Martyr. In 1538, the Venetian government, dissatisfied with Titian's neglect of his work for the ducal palace, ordered him to refund the money he had received, and Il Pordenone, his rival of recent years, was installed in his place. However, at the end of a year Pordenone died, and Titian, who meanwhile applied himself diligently to painting in the hall the Battle of Cadore, was reinstated.

This major battle scene was lost—with many other major works by Venetian artists—in the 1577 fire that destroyed all the old pictures in the great chambers of the Doge's Palace. It depicted in life-size the moment when the Venetian general d'Alviano attacked the enemy, with horses and men crashing down into a river during a heavy rainstorm (according to Vasari). It was Titian's most important attempt at a tumultuous and heroic scene of movement to rival Raphael's The Battle of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, Michelangelo's equally ill-fated Battle of Cascina, and Leonardo da Vinci's The Battle of Anghiari (these last two unfinished). Gillet mentions a "poor, incomplete copy at the Uffizi, and a mediocre engraving by Fontana." This period of Titian's work is still represented by the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin (Venice, 1539), one of his most popular canvasses, and by the Ecce Homo (Vienna, 1541). Despite its loss, the Battle of Cadore had a great influence on Bolognese art and Rubens. His Speech of the Marquis del Vasto (Madrid, 1541) was also partly destroyed by fire.

Esthy Kravitz-Lurie writes that modern scholarly consensus is that the traditional identification of Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto, as the male protagonist in Titian's painting, Allegory of Marriage, now in the Louvre, presents problems of interpretation. It is generally believed to have been finished in 1530–1535. Alfonso d'Avalos wrote a letter in November 1531 to Pietro Aretino, in which he stated that he wished to be portrayed by Titian with his wife and son. Although the letter does not prove that the artist undertook such a commission, the painting subsequently was regarded as a portrait of the military figure. The earliest identification of the painting's protagonist as the warrior d'Avalos is in an inventory of artworks belonging to the English King Charles I, completed in 1639 by Abraham van der Doort, Keeper of Charles I's art collections. As noted by Paul Johannides, van der Doort's reference can be interpreted as 'owned by' rather than as 'representing', suggesting that Alfonso might have been the commissioner of the painting rather than its male subject.

Portrait of Federico II Gonzaga, c. 1529. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Walter Friedlaender calls Titian's three paintings on the ceiling of Santa Maria della Salute "manifestations of genius unprecedented even in Titian's own work", as expressed in the impassioned power of movement in the composition and in his "daring" use of contrapposti and foreshortening. These represent Cain and Abel, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and David and Goliath. Friedlaender says these paintings, finished in 1544, were greatly influential in the development of Baroque painting, and admired because of his success in projecting powerful movement in the spaces overhead without using a complicated system of perspective. Further, this new mode introduced in the Salute paintings was an important influence on Veronese's decorations in San Sebastiano and on Rubens in his later decorations for the Church of San Carlo Borromeo in Antwerp.

Pesaro altarpiece, 1521–26, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

At this time also, during his visit to Rome, the artist began a series of reclining Venuses: The Venus of Urbino of the Uffizi, Venus and Love at the same museum, Venus—and the Organ-Player, Madrid, which shows the influence of contact with ancient sculpture. Giorgione had already dealt with the subject in his Dresden picture, finished by Titian, but here a purple drapery substituted for a landscape background changed, by its harmonious colouring, the whole meaning of the scene.

Equestrian Portrait of Charles V, 1548, Museo del Prado

Titian's Danaë (1544–1546) is a masterful demonstration of his painterly use of colour, imbuing the painting, according to Janson, with "unrivaled richness and complexity of colour". Janson contrasts Titian's embrace of the sensual and emotional appeal of colore with Michelangelo's more intellectual emphasis on disegno, or design, as seen in the detailed drawings of figures made in preparation for his painted compositions. Danaë was one of several mythological paintings, or "poesie" ("poems"), as the painter called them. This painting was done for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, but a later variant was produced for Philip II (while he was still crown prince), for whom Titian painted many of his most important mythological paintings. Although Michelangelo adjudged this piece deficient from his point of view regarding the importance of preliminary drawings for a composition, Titian and his studio produced several versions for other patrons.

From the beginning of his career, Titian was a virtuoso portrait-painter, in works like La Bella (Eleanora de Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, at the Palazzo Pitti). He painted the likenesses of princes, or Doges, cardinals or monks, and artists or writers. "...no other painter was so successful in extracting from each physiognomy so many traits at once characteristic and beautiful". Concerning portraiture and portrait-painters, the art historian Kenneth Clark writes: "The portrait is a thorn in the side of the student of aesthetics. Having established to his satisfaction that art does not consist in imitation, he must face the fact that three of the greatest artists who ever lived, Titian, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, gave the best of their talents to painting portraits."

These qualities show in the Portrait of Pope Paul III of Naples, or the sketch of the same Pope Paul III and his Grandsons, the Portrait of Pietro Aretino of the Pitti Palace, the Portrait of Isabella of Portugal (Madrid), and the series of Emperor Charles V of the same museum, the Charles V with a Greyhound (1533), and especially the Equestrian Portrait of Charles V (1548), an equestrian picture in a symphony of purples. This state portrait of Charles V (1548) at the Battle of Mühlberg established a new genre, that of the grand equestrian portrait. The composition is steeped both in the Roman tradition of equestrian sculpture and in the medieval representations of an ideal Christian knight, but the weary figure and face have a subtlety few such representations attempt. In 1532, after painting a portrait of the Emperor Charles V in Bologna, he was made a Count Palatine and knight of the Golden Spur. His children were also made nobles of the Empire, which for a painter was an exceptional honor.

Self-Portrait, c. 1546–47

This appointment allowed him to gain royal patronage and work on prestigious commissions. As a matter of professional and worldly success, his position from about this time is regarded as equal only to that of Raphael, Michelangelo and, at a later date, Rubens. In 1540 he received a pension from d'Avalos, marquis del Vasto, and an annuity of 200 crowns (which was afterwards doubled) from Charles V from the treasury of Milan. Another source of profit, for he was always aware of money, was a contract obtained in 1542 for supplying grain to Cadore, where he visited almost every year and where he was both generous and influential.

Titian had a favourite villa on the neighboring Manza Hill (in front of the church of Castello Roganzuolo) from which (it may be inferred) he made his chief observations of landscape form and effect. The so-called Titian's mill, constantly discernible in his studies, is at Collontola, near Belluno.

He visited Rome in 1546 and obtained the freedom of the city—his immediate predecessor in that honor having been Michelangelo in 1537. He could at the same time have succeeded the painter Sebastiano del Piombo in his lucrative office as holder of the piombo or Papal seal, and he was prepared to take Holy Orders for the purpose; but the project lapsed through his being summoned away from Venice in 1547 to paint Charles V and others in Augsburg. He was there again in 1550, and executed the portrait of Philip II, which was sent to England and was useful in Philip's suit for the hand of Queen Mary.

Final years

"Poesie" redirects here. For other uses, see Poesy (disambiguation) and Poésie (disambiguation).

Venus and Organist and Little Dog, c. 1550. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

During the last twenty-six years of his life (1550–1576), Titian worked mainly for Philip II and as a portrait-painter. He became more self-critical, an insatiable perfectionist, keeping some pictures in his studio for ten years—returning to them and retouching them, constantly adding new expressions at once more refined, concise, and subtle. He also finished many copies that his pupils made of his earlier works. This caused problems of attribution and priority among versions of his works—which were also widely copied and faked outside his studio during his lifetime and afterwards.

For Philip II, he painted a series of large mythological paintings known as the "poesie", mostly from Ovid, which scholars regard as among his greatest works. Thanks to the prudishness of Philip's successors, these were later mostly given as gifts, and only two remain in the Prado. Titian was producing religious works for Philip at the same time, some of which—the ones inside Ribeira Palace—are known to have been destroyed during the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake. The "poesie" series contained the following works:

• Danaë, sent to Philip in 1553, now in the Wellington Collection, with earlier and later versions
• Venus and Adonis, of which the earliest surviving version, delivered in 1554, is in the Prado, but several versions exist
• Perseus and Andromeda (Wallace Collection, now damaged)
• Diana and Actaeon, owned jointly by the National Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh
• Diana and Callisto, were dispatched in 1559, owned jointly by the National Gallery and the National Gallery of Scotland
• The Rape of Europa (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), delivered in 1562
• The Death of Actaeon, now in the National Gallery in London, begun in 1559 but worked on for many years and never completed or delivered

In 1623, when Prince Charles of England was to be married to Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, "[h]er enormous dowry was to be partially paid in pictures. Prince Charles had asked for all of Titian's Poesie". When Charles cancelled the wedding, "Titian's Poesie, not yet shipped, were taken out of their crates and hung back up on the walls of the Spanish royal palace".

The poesie, except for The Death of Actaeon, were brought together for the first time in nearly 500 years in an exhibition in 2020 and 2021 that travelled from the National Gallery in London, to the Museo del Prado in Madrid, to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where it closed on January 2, 2022.

• Titian's poesie series for Philip II
• 
  Danaë
• 
  Venus and Adonis
• 
  Diana and Actaeon
• 
  Diana and Callisto
• 
  Perseus and Andromeda
• 
  The Rape of Europa
• 
  The Death of Actaeon

Another painting that apparently remained in his studio at his death, and has been much less well known until recent decades, is the powerful, even "repellent" Flaying of Marsyas (Kroměříž, Czech Republic). Another violent masterpiece is Tarquin and Lucretia (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum).

The Rape of Europa c. 1560–1562, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, is a bold diagonal composition that Rubens admired and copied. In contrast to the clarity of Titian's early works, it is almost baroque in its blurred lines, swirling colours, and vibrant brushstrokes.

According to the art historian Louis Gillet:

For each of the problems which he successively undertook he furnished a new and more perfect formula. He never again equalled the emotion and tragedy of the "Crowning with Thorns" (Louvre), in the expression of the mysterious and the divine he never equalled the poetry of the "Pilgrims of Emmaus", while in superb and heroic brilliancy he never again executed anything more grand than "The Doge Grimani adoring Faith" (Venice, Doge's Palace), or the "Trinity", of Madrid. On the other hand from the standpoint of flesh tints, his most moving pictures are those of his old age, the "Dana" of Naples and of Madrid, the "Antiope" of the Louvre, the "Rape of Europa" (Boston, Gardner collection), etc. He even attempted problems of chiaroscuro in fantastic night effects ("Martyrdom of St. Laurence", Church of the Jesuits, Venice; "St. Jerome," Louvre). In the domain of the real he always remained equally strong, sure, and master of himself; his portraits of Philip II (Madrid), those of his daughter, Lavinia, and those of himself are numbered among his masterpieces.

Titian had engaged his daughter Lavinia, the beautiful girl whom he loved deeply and painted various times, to Cornelio Sarcinelli of Serravalle. She had succeeded her aunt Orsa, then deceased, as the manager of the household, which, with the lordly income that Titian made by this time, placed her on a corresponding footing. Lavinia's marriage to Cornelio took place in 1554. She died in childbirth in 1560.

Titian was at the Council of Trent towards 1555, of which there is a finished sketch in the Louvre. His friend Aretino died suddenly in 1556, and another close intimate, the sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino, in 1570. In September 1565 Titian went to Cadore and designed the decorations for the church at Pieve, partly executed by his pupils. One of these is a Transfiguration, another an Annunciation (now in San Salvatore, Venice), inscribed Titianus fecit, by way of protest (it is said) against the disparagement of some persons who caviled at the veteran's failing handicraft.

Around 1560, Titian painted the oil on canvas Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, a derivative on the motif of Madonna and Child. It is suggested that members of Titian's Venice workshop probably painted the curtain and Luke, because of the lower quality of those parts.

Pietà, c. 1576, his last painting. Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.

He continued to accept commissions to the end of his life. Like many of his late works, Titian's last painting, the Pietà, is a dramatic, nocturnal scene of suffering. He apparently intended it for his own tomb chapel. He had selected, as his burial place, the chapel of the Crucifix in the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the church of the Franciscan Order. In payment for a grave, he offered the Franciscans a picture of the Pietà that represented himself and his son Orazio, with a sibyl, before the Savior. He nearly finished this work, but differences arose regarding it, and he settled on being interred in his native Pieve. Yet he ended up being interred in the Frari.

Death

Tomb of Titian in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

While the plague raged in Venice, Titian died on 27 August 1576. Depending on his unknown birthdate (see above), he was somewhere from his late eighties or even close to 100. Titian was interred in the Frari (Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari), as first intended, and his Pietà was finished by Palma il Giovane. He lies near his own famous painting, the Madonna di Ca' Pesaro. No memorial marked his grave. Much later the Austrian rulers of Venice commissioned Antonio Canova to sculpt the large monument still in the church.

Very shortly after Titian's death, his son, assistant and sole heir Orazio, also died of the plague, greatly complicating the settlement of his estate, as he had made no will.

Printmaking

Drowning of Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea, 1515–17, woodcut, 221.5 cm wide

Titian never attempted engraving, but he was very conscious of the importance of printmaking as a means to expand his reputation. In the period 1515–1520 he designed a number of woodcuts, including an enormous and impressive one of The Drowning of Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea, in twelve blocks, intended as wall decoration as a substitute for paintings; and collaborated with Domenico Campagnola and others, who produced additional prints based on his paintings and drawings. Much later he provided drawings based on his paintings to Cornelis Cort from the Netherlands who engraved them. Martino Rota followed Cort from about 1558 to 1568.

Painting materials

Titian employed an extensive array of pigments and it can be said that he availed himself of virtually all available pigments of his time. In addition to the common pigments of the Renaissance period, such as ultramarine, vermilion, lead-tin yellow, ochres, and azurite, he also used the rare pigments realgar and orpiment.

Family and workshop

The Allegory of Age Governed by Prudence (c. 1565–1570) is thought to depict (from left) Titian, his son Orazio, and his nephew, Marco Vecellio. National Gallery, London.

Titian's wife, Cecilia, was a barber's daughter from his hometown village of Cadore. As a young woman she had been his housekeeper and mistress for some five years. Cecilia had already borne Titian two sons, Pomponio and Orazio, when in 1525 she fell seriously ill. Titian, wishing to legitimize the children, married her. Cecilia recovered, the marriage was a happy one, and they had another daughter who died in infancy. In August 1530 Cecilia died. Titian remarried, but little information is known about his second wife; she was possibly the mother of his daughter Lavinia. Titian had a fourth child, Emilia, the result of an affair, possibly with a housekeeper. His favourite child was Orazio, who became his assistant.

In August 1530, Titian moved his two sons and infant daughter to a new home and convinced his sister Orsa to come from Cadore and take charge of the household. The mansion, difficult to find now, is in the Biri Grande, then a fashionable suburb, at the extreme end of Venice, on the sea, with beautiful gardens and a view towards Murano. In about 1526 he had become acquainted, and soon close friends, with Pietro Aretino, the influential and audacious figure who features in the chronicles of the time. Titian sent a portrait of him to Gonzaga, duke of Mantua.

The famed Italian painter Tintoretto was brought when he was very young to Titian's studio by his father. Tom Nichols says Tintoretto probably entered Titian's workshop during the period of 1530–1539, but only for a very brief time, and that he likely switched to another Venetian studio.

Several other artists of the Vecelli family followed in the wake of Titian. Francesco Vecellio, his older brother, was introduced to painting by Titian (it is said at the age of twelve, but chronology will hardly admit of this), and painted in the church of S. Vito in Cadore a picture of the titular saint armed. This was a noteworthy performance, of which Titian (the usual story) became jealous; so Francesco was diverted from painting to soldiering, and afterwards to mercantile life.

Diana and Actaeon, 1556–1559.
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Marco Vecellio, called Marco di Tiziano, born in 1545, was Titian's nephew and was constantly with the master in his old age, and learned his methods of work. He has left some able productions in the ducal palace, the Meeting of Charles V and Clement VII in 1529; in San Giacomo di Rialto, an Annunciation; in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Christ Fulminant. A son of Marco, named Tiziano (or Tizianello), painted early in the 17th century.

From a different branch of the family came Fabrizio di Ettore, a painter who died in 1580. His brother Cesare, who also left some pictures, is well known by his book of engraved costumes, Abiti antichi e moderni. Tommaso Vecelli, also a painter, died in 1620. There was another relative, Girolamo Dante, who, being a scholar and assistant of Titian, was called Girolamo di Tiziano. Various pictures of his were touched up by the master, and are difficult to distinguish from originals.

Few of the pupils and assistants of Titian became well known in their own right; for some being his assistant was probably a lifetime career. Paris Bordone and Bonifazio Veronese were his assistants during some points in their careers. Giulio Clovio said Titian employed El Greco (or Dominikos Theotokopoulos) in his last years. Polidoro da Lanciano is said to have been a follower or pupil of Titian. Other followers were Nadalino da Murano, Damiano Mazza, and Gaspare Nervesa.

Present day

Woman with a Mirror, c. 1515, Louvre.

Contemporary estimates attribute around 400 works to Titian, of which about 300 survive. Two of Titian's works in private hands were put up for sale in 2008. One of these, Diana and Actaeon, was purchased by the National Gallery in London and the National Galleries of Scotland on 2 February 2009 for £50 million. The galleries had until 31 December 2008 to make the purchase before the work would be offered to private collectors, but the deadline was extended. The sale created controversy with politicians who argued that the money could have been spent more wisely during a deepening recession. The Scottish Government offered £12.5 million and £10 million came from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The rest of the money came from the National Gallery and from private donations. The other painting, Diana and Callisto, was for sale for the same amount until 2012 before it was offered to private collectors.

Titian hair

Titian hair has been used to describe red hair, almost always on women, since the 19th century. Anne Shirley, from Lucy Maud Montgomery's 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, is described as having Titian hair when 15:

Well, we heard him say—didn't we, Jane?—'Who is that girl on the platform with the splendid Titian hair? She has a face I should like to paint.' There now, Anne. But what does Titian hair mean?" "Being interpreted it means plain red, I guess," laughed Anne. "Titian was a very famous artist who liked to paint red-haired women."

— L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Gallery of works

• 
  Portrait of a Lady ('La Schiavona') 1510-12
• 
  Noli me tangere, 1511–15, National Gallery London
• 
  Portrait of Jacopo Sannazaro, 1514–18, Royal Collection, UK
• 
  Man with a glove, c. 1520, Louvre, Paris
• 
  La Bella, c. 1536, Palazzo Pitti, Florence
• 
  David and Goliath, 1542–44, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice
• 
  Pope Paul III and His Grandsons, c. 1546; Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
• 
  Saint Jerome in Penitence, c. 1552
• 
  Altarpiece of James the Greater, 1558, San Lio church, Venice
• 
  The Entombment, c. 1572, Prado Museum, Madrid
• 
  The Flaying of Marsyas, 1570s

References

• Cole, Bruce, Titian and Venetian Painting, 1450–1590, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1999, ISBN 0-8133-9043-5
• Gould, Cecil, The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, National Gallery Catalogues, London, 1975, ISBN 0-947645-22-5
• Hale, Sheila (2012). Titian : His Life. New York : HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-059876-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Jaffé, David (ed.), Titian, The National Gallery Company/Yale, London, 2003, ISBN 1-85709-903-6
• Landau, David, in Jane Martineau and Charles Hope (eds.), The Genius of Venice, 1500–1600, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1983, ISBN 0810909855, ISBN 0297783238
• Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume II, Venice 1540–1600, 2008, National Gallery Publications Ltd, ISBN 1-85709-913-3
• Ridolfi, Carlo (1594–1658), The Life of Titian, translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter E. Bondanella, Penn State Press, 1996, ISBN 0-271-01627-2, ISBN 978-0-271-01627-6
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rossetti, William Michael (1911). "Titian". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 1023–1026.

Further reading

• List of works by Titian
• Crowe, Joseph Archer and Cavalcaselle, Giovanni Battista, Titian: His Life and Times. With Some Account of His Family, Chiefly from New and Unpublished Records. Volume I (London: John Murray, 1877)
• The Life and Times of Titian. With Some Account of His Family. Volume II (London: John Murray, 1881).
• Dalvit, Giulio and Peyton, Elizabeth, Titian's Man in a Red Hat, The Frick Collection, 2022, ISBN 978-1-913875-30-5
• Gayford, Martin, Venice: City of Pictures, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2024 (esp. ch. 5, "'Night and Day with Brush in Hand': Titian in the 1520s", and ch. 8, "'A New Path to Make Myself Famous': Titian in Old Age").
• Hope, Charles, Titian, New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
• Hudson, Mark, Titian: The Last Days, New York: Walker and Company, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8027-1076-5
• Loh, Maria H., Titian's Touch: Art, Magic and Philosophy, London: Reaktion Books, 2019, ISBN 978-1789140828, ISBN 178914082X
• Panofsky, Erwin (1969). Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic. New York University Press. ISBN 0714813257.
• Nichols, Tom, Titian and the End of the Venetian Renaissance, London: Reaktion Books, 2013. ISBN 978 1 78023 186 0
• Prose, Francine and Salomon, Xavier F., Titian's Pietro Aretino, The Frick Collection, 2020, ISBN 978-1-911-282-71-6
• Rossetti, William Michael (1888). "Titian" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. XXIII (9th ed.). pp. 413–417.

External links

• 139 artworks by or after Titian at the Art UK site
• A closer Look at the Madonna of the Rabbit multimedia feature, Musée du Louvre official site (English version)
• The Titian Foundation Images of 168 paintings by the artist.
• Titian's paintings
• Tiziano Vecellio at Web Gallery of Art
• Christies' sale blurb for the recently restored 'Mother and Child'
• Bell, Malcolm The early work of Titian, at Internet Archive
• Titian at Panopticon Virtual Art Gallery
• How to Paint Like Titian James Fenton essay on Titian from The New York Review of Books
• Tiziano Vecellio - one of the greatest artists of all time
• Interactive high resolution scientific imagery of Titian's Portrait of a Woman with a Mirror from the C2RMF
• Titian: general resources, his paintings, and pigments used, ColourLex
• Teresa Lignelli, "Archbishop Filippo Archinto by Titian (cat. 204)," in The John G. Johnson Collection: A History and Selected Works, a Philadelphia Museum of Art free digital publication
• Titian's Filppo Archinto at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• The poesie exhibition at the National Gallery in London (16 March 2020 – 17 January 2021), the Museo del Prado in Madrid (2 March 2021 – 4 July 2021), and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (12 August 2021 – 2 January 2022)