Da Tiziano Vecellio (1480-1576) Biography
(1488/90 - 1576) "Titian was truly the most excellent of those who painted: since his brushes always gave birth to expressions of life" (Marco Boschini, 1674). Born in Pieve di Cadore, in the province of Belluno, in the Cadore mountains, between 1488 and 1490, Tiziano Vecellio belongs to an ancient family from the small Alpine centre. An extroverted man, a tireless worker, Titian worked tirelessly on his works. His career was triumphal, his life long-lasting, if it is true that death came when the painter had already passed the incredible age of eighty. Still very young, he abandoned the "magnificent Cadore community" to receive an adequate pictorial education. Thus he arrived in Venice, where his first teachers were Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. Between 1508 and 1509, he worked alongside the painter Giorgione in the creation of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Only a year later, his fame was already consolidated and he received important commissions, such as the Altarpiece of San Marco and Santa Maria della Salute. In 1511 he frescoed the Scuola del Santo in Padua. Having obtained an official income from the Council of Ten, intended for the best painters, in 1533 he became the official painter of the Republic of Venice. His activity was frenetic: he accepted many commissions from contemporary nobility, creating several works with profane subjects. In 1516 Alfonso I d'Este requested his services and in 1518 commissioned him to decorate the "alabaster dressing room". Between 1519 and 1526 he painted the Pesaro Altarpiece for the Frari, and the Averoldi Polyptych for the church of Santi Nazaro e Celso in Brescia. Now hailed as the most famous painter of the time, Titian was disputed among the Italian courts: he worked in Mantua for the Gonzaga family and in Urbino for the dukes. His collaboration with Pope Paul III and his family began in 1542; he soon moved to Rome and remained here until 1546. At the same time, his appreciated activity as a portraitist continued and he had the opportunity to portray Charles V during his coronation in 1530. The emperor and his son Philip II, future kings of Spain, make him their favorite painter. Titian worked for years in the service of the Habsburg family. He died on 27 August 1576, while the plague was raging, leaving unfinished the work he would have liked to be placed on his tomb: the "Pietà".
