Titian (1488-1576)
POETRY IN PAINTING
“Nobody cares much at heart about Titian; only there is a strange undercurrent of everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they.”
—John Ruskin, Victorian author and poet
More than 400 years after his death, 16th-century Venetian artist Titian is still praised as one of the greatest painters in history. A master of portraits, altarpieces, and religious and mythological themes, the strength of Titian’s art lies in his subjects’ tenderness, radiance, and refinement, thanks in part to his supreme command of color and flawless methods of execution.
Titian, or Tiziano Vecellio as he was christened, was born in Pieve di Cadore near Venice. His date of birth has been widely disputed, and various sources have listed different years from 1477 to 1490; however, most believe it was about 1488. As a child, Titian apprenticed in the workshop of mosaic artist Sebastiano Zuccato and then later trained with Giovanni Bellini. He was most influenced, however, by his mentor Giorgione, with whom he also collaborated on a number of works. In fact, Titian completed some of Giorgione’s works-in-progress following the man’s death, and historians remain unclear about the true origin of several pieces, which could be attributed to either artist.
During his long and illustrious career, Titian received numerous distinguished commissions, including from emperor Charles V of Bologna, Pope Paul III, and Philip II of Spain, for whom he painted a number of works featuring eroticized mythological figures based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He termed these “poesie,” which suggests a number of possibilities. Among them that the works are a form of visual poetry, that they are rooted in literature, and that the artist believed in taking liberties when depicting the stories on canvas. —RJR
Notable works: Assumption of the Virgin, 1518; Venus of Urbino, 1538; Portrait of Pope Paul III, 1543.