Titian Vecelli

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Titian Vecelli : biography

1488 – 27 August 1576

In 1523 Titian worked in Ferrara and got orders from Mantua’s marquise Frederico Gonzagi and doge Andrea Gritti. By that time the artist had personal life – he loved a woman named Cecilia, who gave birth to two sons, Oracio and Pomponio, and in 1925 he married mother of his children.

The painter continued to make altar images. The most famous of them are “Madonna of Pezaro’s house” (1526) for a church Santa Maria Dei Frari and “The assassination of Saint Peter Martyr” (1528) for a church Santi Giovanni-e-Paolo, which took the first place in a contest, organized by the church.

At the end of 1529 Titian went to Bologna to paint a portrait of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Carl V, who had come to Italy. The emperor was delighted with the painter, and since the next year Titian started to painted by his orders. After giving the master a deep respect from th emperor, the destiny presented Titian a daughter Lavinia in 1930, but apparently for balance, took away his wife. After Cecilia’s death Titian never married and lived with children in a huge and beautiful house with a garden, which faced a lagoon. The painter didn’t have problems with money and buying a house – after each portrait of Carl V Titian got thousand gold coins. In 1533 Carl made the painter a Palatin count and made him a knight of the Order of the Golden Spur with a lifelong pension – every year Naples’ Treasury paid two hundred gold coins to Titian.

Incidentally, after Titian painted a portrait of the Spanish king Phillip, who was emperor’s son, he got the same pension from Spain. Thus, his income was nearly seven hundred golden coins a year, and the painter wasn’t needy till the end of his life – it is rare fortune for an artistic person! Of course, there were other gains besides pensions from kings and Venice government, because Titian had enormous number of orders. For instance, he painted portraits of the Roman king Ferdinand, both his sons, queen Maria and many portraits of courtiers and aristocracy.

In Venice the painter maintained close friendship with a sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino. Along with Pietro Aretino they formed a triumvirate, which determined a character of Venetian artistic culture for long. This status with a status of “emperor’s painter” brought Titian many privileges and incredible popularity.

In 1536 Titian started painting the cycle “Twelve Caesars” for Frederico Gonzaga, a leader of Mantua, and in 1538 he painted one of the most famous works of his – “Venus of Urbino”. This painting became an object for variations for many painters – according to experts’ opinions, European painting doesn’t have more seductive, tempting and fresh image of female body’s beauty.

In 40-s of sixteen century Titian worked and travelled a lot. He made a new genre of portraits, which was called “story” by a poet Aretino – these paintings showed clients standing up straight, and their ceremonial splendor was combined with a plot and complexity of characters, and it brought parade portraits closer to a genre “historian painting”. Very likely, this and previous decades were the most successful periods in Titian’s artistic work.

In 1545 Titian moved to Rome, where he saw artistic monuments of this great city and painted a portrait of the Roman Pope Paolo III and portraits of a mighty family Farneze. But Roman artists couldn’t value Titian’s rupture with dominating “mannerism” at those times, appearance of free colouring and naturalistic sensitivity in his pictures. Michelangelo visited Titian in Rome, and when he saw a finished “Danae”, he made a compliment for “style and colouring”, but complained that Venetian painters didn’t know “good methods of work”, and when he left the studio, he said that Titian’s artwork was very earthly.

A year later Titian became a honorable citizen of Rome, and in 1547 a painter Sebastian del Piombo, who had been working on the court of the Roman Pope, died. Titian tried to take his position, but got a refuse. In 1548 he left Venice again and went to Augsburg to paint Carl V and his courties’ portraits again.