Short biography

Titian had a very long life, his masterpieces are numerous, resulting from intense activity that lasted more than seventy years. This brief biography provides an account of his most significant works, not all of them, his most important patrons, and the main events that saw him protagonist.

Titian was born in Pieve di Cadore around 1485 or perhaps even earlier, if we assume that Jacopo Pesaro’s Paletta (Antwerp) is made on the occasion of the victory of Alexander VI’s naval fleets against the Turks at Santa Maura in 1502. He certainly came of age in 1508, when sources remember him active in the decoration of the side facade of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. In 1511 he obtained his first documented commission, the frescoes with the Stories of St. Anthony in the Scuola del Santo in Padua. Among the works of this decade are his first portraits (London, National Gallery), the altarpiece with St. Mark Enthroned for the church of Santo Spirito in Isola (now at the Salute, 1510), as well as Sacred and Profane Love (1514), and especially the altarpiece with the Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar of the Frari church (1518). During the 1920s he circumscribed those commissioning relationships that would continue for a long time: with the Republic of Venice (portraits of the doges and works lost for the Doge’s Palace), with the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso I d’Este (the famous “bacchanals” intended for the “alabaster chamber”), with the Pesaro family (altarpiece for the Frari church, 1526), with the marquis and later duke of Mantua Federico Gonzaga (from whom he obtained the keys to the imperial court), and with Charles V and his entourage (in particular with Alfonso d’Avalos, marquis of Vasto and general of the imperial troops). 

In the same years he became friends with Pietro Aretino, of whom he produced the Portrait of Pietro Aretino (Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 1545), donated by Titian to his literary friend, who in turn made a gift of it to Cosimo I de’ Medici.

Sealing a long-standing commissioning relationship with the Duke of Urbino, he executed in 1538 the portraits of Francesco Maria della Rovere and Eleonora Gonzaga (Uffizi), while their son Guidobaldo came into possession of the famous Venus, so-called of Urbino (Florence, Uffizi). In 1545 he traveled to Rome and worked for Paul III – for whom he realizes the extraordinary portrait with his nephews (Capodimonte) – and for the Farnese family, among others. 

Arriving in Augsburg in 1548, he produced several portraits for the court, including the famous one of Charles V on horseback (Madrid, Prado). Titian’s strong ties with the imperial circle were further consolidated by the continuing relationship established with Prince Philip, for whom he painted many works in the years to come including the famous “poesie” – ancient fables from the Metamorphoses, in which a renewed style with broader brushstrokes emerges – that Titian would continue to send to Spain until 1575.

Worthy of special mention is the magnificent nocturne of the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence for the church of the Crociferi (now Jesuits), completed in 1559. 

He died in Venice on August 27, 1576, and the following day was buried at the Frari. 

In the final year of his life he worked on the moving Pietà at the Accademia in Venice, where he portrays himself as Saint Jerome kneeling before the dead Christ. This work and the impressive Marsyas of Kroměříž Castle present a dismemberment of the pictorial fabric that characterizes his great creative phase, and they constitute a de facto artistic, and human, testament of the great master.