Titian

Tiziano Vecellio (; is generally accepted despite claims in his lifetime that he was older, [http://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500031075 Getty Union Artist Name List] and [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tita/hd_tita.htm Metropolitan Museum of Art timeline, retrieved 11 February 2009] both use c. 1488. See discussion of the issue below and at [https://web.archive.org/web/20030520094844/http://lafrusta.homestead.com/riv_tiziano.html When Was Titian Born?], which sets out the evidence, and supports 1477. Gould (pp. 264–66) also sets out much of the evidence without coming to a conclusion. Charles Hope in Jaffé, 2003 (p. 11) also discusses the issue, favouring a date "in or just before 1490" as opposed to the much earlier dates, as does Penny (p. 201) "probably in 1490 or a little earlier".}}27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian Renaissance painter. The most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting, he was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno.

Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, exerted a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western artists.

His career was successful from the start, and he became sought after by patrons, initially from Venice and its possessions, then joined by the north Italian princes, and finally the Habsburgs and the papacy. Along with Giorgione, he is considered a founder of the Venetian school of Italian Renaissance painting. In 1590, the painter and art theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo described Titian as "the sun amidst small stars not only among the Italians but all the painters of the world".

During his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically,}} but he retained a lifelong interest in colour. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, they are remarkable and original in their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone. Provided by Wikipedia