Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (c. 1488-90 – August 27, 1576), commonly known as Titian, was one of the greatest 16th century Renaissance painters of Venice, Italy.

Early work

A fresco of Hercules on the Morosini Palace is said to have been one of his

Related Topics:
Fresco - Hercules

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earliest works; others were the Virgin and Child, in the Vienna Belvedere, and the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth (from the convent of S. Andrea), now in the Venetian Academy.

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Titian entered into partnership with Giorgione, and it is difficult to distinguish their early works. The earliest known work of Titian, the little Ecce Homo of the Scuola di San Rocco, was long regarded as the work of Giorgione. And the same confusion or uncertainty is connected with more than one of the Sacred Conversations.

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The two young masters were likewise recognized as the two leaders of their new school of Arte moderna, that is of painting made more flexible, freed from symmetry and the remnants of hieratic conventions still to be found in the works of Giovanni Bellini.

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In 1507–1508 Giorgione was commissioned by the state to execute frescoes on the re-erected Fondaco de Tedeschi. Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some fragments of Titian's paintings remain. Some of their work is known to us in part through the engraving of Fontana.

Related Topics:
1507 - 1508 - Morto da Feltre - Fontana

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An idea of Titian's talent in fresco may be gained from 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 from the life of St. Anthony of Padua, the Murder of a Young Woman by Her Husband, A Child Testifying to Its Mother's Innocence, and The Saint Healing the Young Man with a Broken Limb.

Related Topics:
1511 - Padua - Carmelite

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Among the religious paintings of this period may be mentioned that of Antwerp, The Doge Pesaro presented to St. Peter by Alexander VI (1508), and the beautiful St. Mark surrounded by Sts. Cosmas and Damian, Sebastian and Rocco (Venice, S. Maria della Salute, c. 1511).

Related Topics:
Antwerp - Doge - 1508 - St. Mark - Sts. Cosmas and Damian - Sebastian - 1511

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Already the young master was in possession of his type of Virgins with powerful shoulders and somewhat rounded countenances, and in particular he had elaborated an extremely refined type of Christ, the most beautiful example of which is the wonderful Christ of The Tribute Money, at Dresden, a face whose delicacy, spirituality, and moral charm have never been surpassed by any other School. From the same period seems to date the Triumph of Faith, a subject borrowed from Savonarola's famous treatise, The Triumph of the Cross, and treated with a magnificent fire in the spirit of Mantegna's cartoons and Dürer's prints of the Triumph of Maximilian (cf. Male, L'art réligieux en France à la fin du moyen âge, 1908, 296 sqq.).

Related Topics:
Virgins - Christ - Dresden - Savonarola's - Mantegna - Dürer - 1908

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But what may be called the most enduring works of Titian's youth are the secular and indeterminately allegorical ones. An example is the charming picture of The Three Ages of Man, in the Ellesmere Gallery; such especially is the masterpiece in the Cassino Borghese, Profane and Sacred Love, whose meaning has never been successfully penetrated.

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From Padua Titian in 1512 returned to Venice; and in 1513 he obtained a broker's patent in the Fondaco de Tedeschi (state-warehouse for the German merchants), termed La Sanseria or Senseria (a privilege much coveted by rising or risen artists), and became superintendent of the government works, being

Related Topics:
1512 - 1513 - German

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especially charged to complete 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, upon the death of Bellini, that he came into actual enjoyment of his patent. At the same date an arrangement for painting was entered into with Titian alone, to the exclusion of other artists who had heretofore been associated with him. The patent yielded him a good annuity of 20 crowns and exempted him from certain taxes he being bound in return to paint likenesses of the successive Doges of his time at the fixed price of eight crowns each. The actual number which he executed was five.

Related Topics:
Giovanni Bellini - 1516 - Doges

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