TITIAN,

born 1488/90, Pieve di Cadore, republic of Venice died Aug. 27, 1576, Venice Italian in full Tiziano Vecellio, or Vecelli the greatest Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school. The range of his accomplishmentshis observant portraits (Philip II, 155051), poignant religious compositions (Christ Crowned with Thorns, 154650), and joyous treatments of mythological subjects (Venus and Adonis, 155354)has made him one of the giants of Western art. At nine years of age Titian was apprenticed to a mosaicist in Venice. He then worked under the Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini and collaborated with Giorgione, whose influence shows particularly in Titian's early works. The exceptional quality of his mature works led to an international reputation and patronage by Italian nobles, the Venetian Republic, the Habsburgs (by whom he was knighted), and Pope Paul III. He traveled to Ferrara, Bologna, Rome, Milan, and outside Italy to Augsburg. From 1551, however, he remained in Venice until his death. Titian's prominence during his lifetime was acknowledged by the government of his city, by the neighbouring courts of Ferrara, Mantua, and Urbino, by the pope, and by Emperor Charles V and his son Philip, king of Spain. Titian's life was exceptionally long and creative. As a result, the evolution of Italian art through the larger part of a century is reflected in his oeuvre. His career may be divided into five phases: First, there were the years of apprenticeship in which he absorbed the achievements of the past. Second, with a bound, he left all of his contemporaries behind and in a miraculous outburst of inventive power directed every branch of painting into new channels, demanding greater material size for greater spiritual expression. Third, there followed a calming-down period when the artist had reached his 40s and his interest turned to refinement and detail. Fourth, he returned to the youthful conceptions of his heroic era, but with new interpretations. Fifth and last, in the isolation and loneliness of age, he rejected all compromise with the demands of his period; this art of Titian's old age, which disregarded his patrons' tastes, became the pure expression of the master's intentions and his fulfillment.