Tiziano Vecellio (1485-1576)

Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (c. 1488/90 - 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter🎨 during the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno, then in the Republic of Venice.

During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, from Cadore, taken from his native region.

Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the famous final line of Dante's Paradiso), 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, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance🎨, but on future generations of Western art.

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 papacy.

Along with Giorgione🎨, he is considered a founder of the Venetian School of Italian Renaissance painting.

During the course of 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, their loose brushwork and subtlety of tone were without precedent in the history of Western painting.

Tiziano Vecellio🎨 (Pieve di Cadore, 1488/1490 - Venezia, 27 agosto 1576) è stato un pittore Italiano🎨, cittadino della Repubblica di Venezia, importante esponente della scuola veneta.

Artista innovatore e poliedrico, maestro con Giorgione del tonalismo, Tiziano Vecellio fu uno dei pochi pittori italiani titolari di una vera e propria azienda, accorto imprenditore della bottega oltre che della sua personale produzione, direttamente a contatto con i potenti dell'epoca, suoi maggiori committenti.

Il rinnovamento della pittura di cui fu autore si basò, in alternativa al michelangiolesco «primato del disegno», sull'uso personalissimo del colore.

L'accordo fra le diverse zone cromatiche (tonalità di colori caldi e freddi) e l'uso sapiente della luce conferiscono unità alle scene rappresentate.

Tiziano usò la forza espressiva del colore materico e poi, entrando nella piena maturità, abbandonò la spazialità bilanciata, il carattere solare e fastoso del colore del Rinascimento, assumendo il dinamismo proprio del manierismo e giocando con libertà nelle variazioni cromatiche in cui il colore era reso "più duttile, più sensibile agli effetti della luce".