Always Titian

More Tiziano Vecellio He was born in Pieve di Cadore, Belluno, Italy between 1477 and 1490.

Renaissance and Mannerist, he was one of the most important painters of the School of Venice.

Amón his contemporaries he was known as The sun among the stars, and he was one of the most complete Italian Renaissance painters, he painted portraits with the same skill as landscapes, mythological scenes or religious themes.

Due to his long life, his work went through different stages, changing his style in a substantial way; This is why some critics doubt that his first works and the last ones were made by the same person.

However, there are common characteristics in all of them: vivid and luminous colors, loose brushwork and delicate tones, in the chromatic modes in his paintings that are unprecedented in the entire History of Art in the West.

Although the place of his birth is known with certainty, it is not the same with the date, according to his death certificate, that the church of San Canciano in Venice is preserved, the artist died at the age of one hundred and three years, so who would have been born in 1473.

At just 10 years old, Tizian and his older brother Francesco went to Venice where they apprenticed to Sebastiano Zuccato’s workshop.

Thanks to his innate talent, in just three or four years, he managed to enter the workshop of the now elderly Giovanni Bellini, at that time, the most recognized artist in Venice.

In this workshop, he met a group of young people who would be the first generation of painters of the Venetian School: Giovanni Palma da Serinalta, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano Luciani, and Giorgio da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione, among others.

One of the first recognized works of him is the fresco on «Hercules in the Morosini Palace.»

Other early works: «Virgin with Child» and «Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth.»

Titian and Giorgione, at this time, were associated, so the difficulty of distinguishing his early works is great.

When in 1510 the plague epidemic swept through Venice and killed his companion Giorgione, Titian went to Padua, where he made a number of frescoes.

In 1512 he returned from Padua to Venice, where he began to establish a network of relationships that would lead him to the top of the Venetian group of artists.

He soon obtained work from the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, obtained from this La Sanseria or Senseria (a privilege highly coveted by emerging artists), and became superintendent of government works, position of official painter of the Republic of Venice, which would report to him Sufficient remuneration and other added privileges.

He would hold the position uninterruptedly for sixty years, until his death.

During his long career he became the most influential of the Venetian School painters, and the most honored of the Most Serene Republic in all its history.

The deaths of Giorgione in 1510 and Bellini in 1516, and the transfers of Sebastiano del Piombo to Rome (1511) and Lorenzo Lotto to Bergamo (1513), left Titian without rivals in the city.

The good relations that he maintained with the court of Mantua provided him with valuable contacts that would lead to his consecration as a portraitist.

In 1530 he was able to paint Carlos I of Spain, who had traveled to Bologna on the occasion of his imperial coronation as Carlos V.

He would make several more portraits of the emperor, his family and his son Philip II.

During this period from 1530 to 1550, as one might suppose in view of the Martyrdom of Saint Peter of Verona, he devoted himself to cultivating an increasingly dramatic style.

His artistic career was very long, with a great production, most of them commissioned.

In his work, the change in status produced during the Renaissance can be perfectly verified, going from being artisans to becoming artists, recognized socially.

The Prado Museum in Madrid houses an important sample of his work.

Likewise, the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid has two other oil paintings, and the Ducal House of Alba has in its private collection several fabrics by the Venetian,