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Titian
(1488/90 - 1576)
Titian or Tiziano Vecellio was born in a small alpine village of Pieve di Cadore, now not far from the Austrian border, where his family lived for many years. His parents, Lucia and Gregorio di Conte dei Vecelli, were respectable people of modest means. In about 1498, at the age of nine or ten, Titian and his elder brother Francesco were sent to Venice to start their training as painters in the workshop of the mosaicist Sebastiano Zuccato. Though soon Titian left his workshop and began studying painting in the workshops of Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini. It is believed, that his earliest surviving work Pope Alexander VI Presenting Jacopo Pesaro to Saint Peter (1502-1512) was influenced by Giovanni Bellini. In 1507, Titian joined the workshop of Giorgione as his assistant and three years (until Giorgione's death in 1510), which he spent with this outstanding master, were a lasting influence on the young Titian to such a degree, that some works which are now thought to have been painted by Titian used to be attributed to Giorgione, and vice versa. One of them is Concert Champetre (c.1510-1511), which is still in some sources considered to be painted by Giorgione. Other works by Titian, which bear the Giorgione's influence are The Birth of Adonis (1505-1510), The Legend of Polydorus (1505-1510), St. Mark Enthroned with Saints (c.1510), The Concert (c.1510), Noli me tangere (1511-1512), Gypsy Madonna (c.1512) and even his masterpiece Sacred and Profane Love (1514).
In 1510 Titian received his first important commission to produce some frescoes in the Scuola del Santo in Padua dedicated the life of St. Anthony of Padua. Since that time Titian began to win independent commissions and to establish himself as a painter in Venice. In 1513 he opened his own workshop, in which he employed two assistants, one of whom had worked for Giovanni Bellini. In 1516 Titian was commissioned to paint a new work for the high altar in the Franciscan church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, the Assumption of the Virgin (Assunta) (1516-1518), which was destined to become the milestone in the history of Venetian High Renaissance. This altarpiece made Titian the most celebrated painter in Venice. At the same time, it drew him to the attention of Bellini's old patrons in the northern Italian ruling houses. He was commissioned by the Duke of Ferrara Alfonso d'Este to produce three large mythological paintings The Worship of Venus (1518), Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-1522) and Bacchanal of the Andrians (1523-1525).
In the following years Titian painted another monumental altarpieces Pesaro Altarpiece (1519-1526) and Madonna in Glory with the Christ Child and Saints Francis and Alvise with the Donor Alvise Gozzi (1520), which set a standard f.... |
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