Titian or (Italian) Tiziano Vecellio (c.1489–1576), Italian painter, born in Pieve di Cadore (Veneto); he trained in the Venetian studio of Giovanni Bellini and subsequently worked on the external decoration of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi as an assistant to Giorgione, whose style he emulated so exactly that some paintings (e.g. Concert champêtre, Louvre) could be by either artist.

Titian’s earliest documented work is a group of three frescoes in the Scuola del Santo in Padua (1511). On returning to Venice, Titian painted the altarpiece of St Mark with Four Saints (c.1511; now housed in the Santa Maria della Salute) and his first masterpiece, Sacred and Profane Love (c.1514, Galleria Borghese, Rome). In the ten-year period between 1516 and 1525 Titian painted the works that were to establish him as the principal painter in Venice for the next 50 years. The best-known portrait of this period is Man with a Glove (c.1520, Louvre). A series of altarpieces includes his Assumption (1516–18, Santa Maria dei Frari, Venice), a Resurrection triptych with a magnificent St Sebastian (1518–22, SS Nazaro e Celso, Brescia), a Madonna and Saints with a Donor (1520, Galleria Comunale Francesco Podesti, Ancona), the Pesaro Madonna (1519–26, Santa Maria dei Frari, Venice), and the celebrated St Peter Martyr (1525–30, painted for the Venetian Church of SS Giovanni e Paolo but now lost and known only from copies). Secular pictures from this period include allegories, notably Three Ages of Man (c.1514, National Gallery, Edinburgh), portraits, and three mythological pictures (1518–23) commissioned by Alfonso I d’ Este for the Camerino d’Alabastro in the castle in Ferrara: Worship of Venus (Prado, Madrid), Bacchanal (Prado), and Bacchus and Ariadne (National Gallery, London).

In the 1530s the style of Titian’s paintings changed: compositions became less flamboyant and more contemplative, and juxtaposed colours were increasingly used to complement rather than contrast. His paintings during this decade include a portrait of Charles V with his dog (1533, Prado), based on one by Jakob Seisenegger, a portrait of Doge Andrea Gritti (National Gallery, Washington), and portraits of Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino, and of his duchess (1536–8, Uffizi). During this period he also painted the Presentation of the Virgin (1534–8, Accademia, Venice), the Pardo Venus (c.1535–40, Louvre), and the Venus of Urbino (c.1538, Uffizi).

In the early 1540s Titian painted his Ecce homo (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), a Crowning with Thorns (Louvre), and three large ceiling canvases of biblical figures (c.1543–4; now in Santa Maria della Salute) for Sansovino’s Church of Santo Spirito, which was demolished in the late seventeenth century. In 1545 Titian made his only journey to Rome, where his paintings were admired; his Danaë (Museo Nazionale, Naples) was praised for its colour, but, according to Vasari, criticized by Michelangelo for poor draughtsmanship. While in Rome he painted his unfinished portrait of Pope Paul III and his Nephews (Museo Nazionale, Naples). Titian returned to Venice in 1546, and two years later was summoned by Charles V to Augsburg, where he painted two portraits of the emperor: the equestrian portrait of Charles at the battle of Mühlberg (Prado) and a seated portrait (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).

In the 1550s Titian’s most important patron was Philip of Spain (later King Philip II), of whom he painted several portraits (notably Philip of Spain in Armour, 1550–1, Prado) and for whom he painted in 1554 a series of mythological pictures that Titian described as poesie, including another Danaë (Prado), Venus and Adonis (Prado), and Perseus and Andromeda (1554, Wallace Collection, London); in the same year he painted La Gloria (Prado), a double portrait of the emperor (in his death shroud) and his dead consort, Isabella of Portugal, being presented to God. In 1559–60 Titian executed two more poesie for King Philip, the Rape of Europa (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) and Diana and Actaeon (London, National Gallery). His most important religious picture of this decade was a Martyrdom of St Lawrence (Gesuiti, Venice).

In the 1560s and 1570s Titian worked primarily as a studio painter. His own paintings included a second version of the Martyrdom of St Lawrence (c.1570, Escorial), a second version of the Crowning of Thorns (c.1570, Alte Pinakothek, Munich), the pastoral idyll Shepherd and Nymph (c.1570, Alte Pinakothek, Munich), and the Pietà (c.1573–6, Accademia, Venice) left unfinished at his death and completed by Palma Giovane.

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