Titian

C.1485/90-1576 • Italian • Painter • Late Renaissance

"They who are compelled to paint by force, without being in the necessary mood, can produce only ungainly works, because this profession requires an unruffled temper." - Titian

According to someone who knew him, Titian arrived in VENICE at the age of eight and was soon employed by a mosaicist (see MOSAIC). He went on to work for Gentile and later Giovanni BELLINI. Next he was with GIORGIONE, whose paintings he completed after the master's death-some scholars insist that Titian alone painted Fete Champetre, usually assigned to Giorgione and dated c. 1510. He survived Giorgione by 66 years and outlived not only RAPHAEL and MICHELANGELO, who were born about the same time that he was, but also the younger Mannensts PONTO RM 0, FIORENTINO, TITIAN 677 PARMIGIANINO, and BRONZINO (see MANNERISM). Through wise investments Titian gained wealth enough to buy his own palace, yet he also worked for royalty. He was court painter for the emperor Charles V, who made him a count. Visiting the painter in his studio, the story goes, the emperor bent down to pick up a brush that Titian had dropped. Such a break with custom matches Titian's own constant disregard for artistic convention. He defied the symmetry of ITALIAN RENAISSANCE organization by introducing off-center and diagonally constructed compositions. His Pope Paul III (1543) is more extraordinary in its emotional drama and psychological insight than in its eccentricity; the pope is presented as a shrewd, tense individual wearing a red velvet cape that is highlighted with gleaming passages of light. Titian's experimentation with color went boldly beyond that of Giorgione: "He used virtually all the pigments available, and he used them in extravagant quantities and inventive combinations," writes Marcia Hall. Titian's color conveys meaning and creates mood and movement. "Flashing" is a word frequently used to describe his brushwork as well as his use of color. Titian's bacchanals vibrate with lustful energy and shimmering color. In The Rape of Europa (c.1560), the buxom Europa is abducted by a great white bull, who is Jupiter in disguise. She is balanced precariously on her back in a suggestive position, and even the sky is aflame with passion. Titian worked in oil paint on canvas in a PAINTERLY manner (though he did not invent that manner, as was previously thought): By leaving brushstrokes of juxtaposed colors unblended, Titian anticipates that the viewer's eye will instinctively blend them. His audience thus becomes an unwitting accomplice of the artist, joining in the visual completion of the painting and thereby contributing to the meaning of the work. Titian's techniques of engagement were new and powerfully effective. Where Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (c. 1510) is wistfully sensual and dreamily nostalgic with her eyes closed, Titian's Venus of Urbino (c. 1538) is wide awake-she makes eye contact with the presumptively male viewer and invites complicity. What was subdued by Giorgione in the guise of a goddess is made explicit by Titian in the portrayal of a nude, contemporary woman. During his career he painted religious and secular subjects with equal verve, and in his last years subjects of torment and suffering dominated his repertoire. For his own tomb, Titian painted a Pieta (c. 1573-76) that included a small, votive picture of his son and himself thanking the Virgin for protecting them against the plague of 1561. They did escape death once, but before Titian finished the painting, both he and his son died, during another epidemic in 1576.