Titian

Italian painter

• Born: c. 1490
• Birthplace: Pieve di Cadore, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)
• Died: August 27, 1576
• Place of death: Venice, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)

Titian is considered one of the greatest artists of the Italian High Renaissance. During his long and prolific career, he developed an oil-painting technique of successive glazes and broad paint application that influenced generations of artists.

Early Life

Titian (TISH-ehn) was born Tiziano Vecellio. Over the centuries, there has been considerable confusion concerning his birth date, as a result of a misprint in his biography by sixteenth century art historian Giorgio Vasari, who recorded it as 1480. The progress of Titian’s career, along with other documentary evidence, indicates instead that Titian was born sometime between 1488 and 1490.

According to the 1557 biography of Titian’s life written by his friend Lodovico Dolce, it is known that Titian arrived in Venice, in the company of his brother Francesco, when he was only eight years old. He first worked for the mosaicist Sebastiano Zuccato but soon entered the workshop of the aging painter Gentile Bellini. Unhappy with Gentile’s old-fashioned style, he moved to the studio of Gentile’s brother, Giovanni, and it is there that Titian learned the current Venetian style and techniques. He also met the short-lived but magnificent painter Giorgione. By 1508, Titian had left Bellini’s studio and was working with Giorgione, perhaps as his assistant, on exterior frescoes for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (German commercial headquarters) in Venice.

Until around 1515, Titian’s style would remain very close to that of Giorgione. In fact, scholars have difficulty distinguishing between the two hands when their paintings from this period are unsigned. The most famous example of this attribution problem is the so-called Fěte Champětre of around 1510, now in the Louvre. The lush pastoral setting, soft lighting, and strong atmospheric qualities characterize the styles of both artists at this time.

In 1511, Titian completed his first dated work, a series of three frescoes in the Scuola di San Antonio at Padua. This commission established his career. Within the next decade, his independent, mature style found expression.

Life’s Work

In 1518, Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin was unveiled at the Church of the Frari in Venice. In this dynamic, monumental composition, Titian seemed suddenly to assimilate the achievements of the Roman High Renaissance style. Since there is no evidence that he had yet traveled beyond the region near Venice, it is assumed that he learned these stylistic lessons through visiting artists, drawings, and reproductive engravings. The painting reflects the harmony and delineation of forms typical of High Renaissance classicism, and an energetic movement similar to that found in Raphael’s Vatican murals and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. To this, Titian added his distinctive brilliant colors, unified by successive layers of glazes.

During the succeeding decades, Titian’s reputation grew until he was, along with Michelangelo, the most famous artist in Europe. His patrons included some of the most powerful men and families of the age. For Alfonso I d’Este of Ferrara he created, among other works, three famous mythological paintings, The Bacchanal of the Andrians (c. 1520), The Worship of Venus (1518-1519), and Bacchus and Ariadne (1522-1523), which were installed in Alfonso’s alabaster studiolo. He also worked for Gonzaga of Mantua and several popes. His most important patrons, however, were the Spanish Habsburgs. In 1533, Titian was summoned to Bologna for the first of several meetings with the emperor Charles V , who became one of his greatest admirers. The emperor made him a count and brought him to Augsburg two times as court painter. When Charles died in 1558, his son Philip II continued the relationship.

These prestigious patrons brought Titian fame, wealth, and social position. A shrewd businessman, he invested wisely and by the 1530’s was living in luxury. Sometime in the early 1520’s, he began a relationship with a woman named Cecilia, by whom he had four children, two before they married in 1525. Cecilia died in 1530, and the next year, Titian moved his family to a palace that came to be known as the Casa Grande. There he lived a princely existence far removed from the craftsperson status artists had held only one hundred years earlier.

Titian’s compositions were often revolutionary as he freed Renaissance classicism from its planar symmetry. He exploited the dramatic possibilities of diagonal placings and perspectives, and set up unusual spectator viewpoints. In this way, he could give traditional subjects a fresh look. This predisposition to creative compositions was evident very early in his career. The Gypsy Madonna (1510-1515) is a variation of the half-length Madonna and Child popular with Giovanni Bellini. Yet Titian has moved all the major forms off center and encouraged the viewer to look diagonally into a landscape to the left of the Madonna. The Madonna of the Pesaro Family (1519-1526) shows a more radical alteration of a traditional subject. The pyramidal grouping of figures, with the enthroned Madonna at the apex, has been shifted so that it is placed diagonally to the frontal plane.

Titian’s style never stagnated. Over the years, his brushwork loosened and forms were increasingly defined by color and light instead of line. In 1546, he returned from an eight-month visit to Rome, and from this point on, his broad handling of paint increased. The result was a type of optical realism, in which the structures of objects were built up through a free application of paint. Details that the human eye does not see without close inspection were not delineated with precise drawing but rather indicated with freely manipulated color and light. In the hands of a master such as Titian, the result was one of startling reality since he had essentially reproduced with paint the reality that the human eye actually absorbs. An example of this loosely painted style was The Rape of Europa (1559-1562), in which textures of fur, skin, cloth, and water were faithfully rendered through broad relationships of color and light. Titian’s development of this technique, which would influence artists throughout forthcoming centuries, played no small part in his fame.

Toward the end of his long career, Titian’s technique loosened still further, and a certain dematerialization of form took place in his paintings. Especially in his religious works, which reflected his own growing awareness of mortality, physicality was overcome by mystical light and emotional expression. Like the late works of Michelangelo, Titian’s final paintings seemed more concerned with spirituality than with the substance of the natural world.

Significance

Titian’s career was a watershed in the evolution of artistic status within society. Well traveled and well respected, he was a friend of princes and intellectuals. Collectors clamored for his works and, despite a large workshop and numerous assistants, he could not satisfy them all. The laws of supply and demand were in his favor and provided a degree of freedom for artistic development rarely seen before. He became the first artist to achieve the status of gentleman.

As early as the middle of the sixteenth century, artists and intellectuals argued over whether Titian or Michelangelo was the greater painter. At the center of this discussion was Titian’s emphasis on color, versus Michelangelo’s preference for line, in creating forms. Some art historians see a dualism of technique and expression beginning with these two artists that can be traced through Baroque art to the theories and practices of the later European art academies. To be sure, sixteenth century Italian painters formulated a tradition that would serve as a reference point for art until the middle of the nineteenth century. Titian’s style was an essential option within that tradition.

Bibliography

Freedberg, Sidney J. Painting in Italy: 1500-1600. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975. An extensive chronological survey of painting in sixteenth century Italy, this volume discusses the various stages of Titian’s career as they relate to contemporary artistic developments in Venice and the rest of Italy. A solid introduction to Titian’s art, with an emphasis on stylistic issues. Contains limited but pertinent photographs and a basic bibliography.

Hope, Charles, et al. Titian: Essays. London: National Gallery, 2003. This collection of essays by world-class Titian scholars was produced to accompany a major exhibition of the artist’s work at the National Gallery in London. Includes lavish illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Meilman, Patricia, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Titian. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Collects interpretive essays on Titian’s works by major scholars. Essays are grouped into three sections: “Titian’s Diverse Genres,” “Titian and His Art,” and “Titian Interpreted.” Includes twenty-eight pages of plates, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Panofsky, Erwin. Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic. New York: New York University Press, 1969. Examines the subjects of a number of Titian’s paintings and how they connect with medieval and Renaissance iconographic traditions. Shows how Titian drew on both popular imagery and high philosophical ideas in devising his symbolism. Contains numerous photographs. There is no bibliography, but as with all Panofsky’s work, the extensive citations in the footnotes serve as the equivalent.

Pedrocco, Filippo, and Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel. Titian. Translated by Corrado Federici. New York: Rizzoli, 2001. A complete catalogue raisonné, designed to replace that of Wethey, taking into account both research and restoration work done in the final quarter of the twentieth century. In addition to color reproductions of every painting attributed to the artist, critical essays discuss Titian’s life, work, critical reception, and artistic, social, and political milieu. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Rosand, David. Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto. Rev. ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Contains several innovative articles that place Titian’s compositions within the pictorial and theatrical traditions of Venice. Lengthy analysis of The Madonna of the Pesaro Family and The Presentation of the Virgin. Contains excellent illustrations, photographs, and bibliography.

Rosand, David, and Michelangelo Muraro. Titian and the Venetian Woodcut. Washington, D.C.: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1976. Discusses Titian’s involvement with the graphic media, especially woodcuts. Extensive illustrations of woodcuts by Titian and other artists influenced by his imagery or technique. Expansive catalog entries on the prints, with excellent illustrations and insightful art historical analysis. Includes a topically limited bibliography.

Wethey, Harold E. The Paintings of Titian. 3 vols. New York: Phaidon, 1969-1975. The standard reference in English and the most recent catalogue raisonné of Titian’s paintings. Each volume contains general essays surveying the artist’s biography, chronology, stylistic development, and handling of themes. Extensive catalog entries on every known or attributed painting, with photographic reproductions (black-and-white) of the complete works. Wethey’s attributions of some early and minor works are not universally accepted, yet this remains one of the most complete sources on Titian.

Zuffi, Stephano. Titian. Edited by Stephano Zuffi and Stefano Peccatori. New York: DK Publishing, 1999. Brief biographical study of Titian, followed by reproduction of the major works. Includes indexes.