Italian painter In a city of the Doges to the ridge of his power, high place of artistic creation, Titien, the brilliance raises of Giorgione, thanks to an exceptional pictorial activity due in particular to its longevity, gave to the Venetian spirit its traditional plenitude and a radiation extending well beyond the limits from Italy, and well after the Rebirth.
After the tests of the beginning of the cinquecento - territorial losses related to the war against the Holy League in 1509 and, two years later, epidemic of plague -, Venice recovers in 1516 its lost territories and enters during one time of economic development and stability favorable to the architectural embellishments and the official orders. It is in this flourishing city that Titien is essential during more than sixty years like the symbol par excellence of the Venetian school.
First years Tiziano Vecellio, known as in French Titien, was born between 1488 and 1490 in the small town from Pieve di Cadore, in Venezia. It is the second son of a family of lawyers and administrators. As of the nine years age, the child is put in training at the mosaïste Sebastiano Zuccato with his Francesco brother, who will remain his collaborator. Then it remains in the workshop of Bellini, Gentile and Giovanni. At eighteen years, he works narrowly with Giorgione, of which he will share during many years research on the chromatism.
As of its youths, Titien takes part thus in the pictorial revolution Venetian, incarnated, with the turning of the century, by Mantegna, Bellini and especially Giorgione, the initiating main thing in the modern way. The values of humanism, the rediscovery of Antiquity, the Neoplatonic speculations direct the choices of new customers and support the widening of the iconographic repertory. The subjects, laymen or antiques, put in scene mythology. The painting of rest and the formats in width are facilitated by the use of the fabric, which supplants wood.
The cooperation between the Master and the pupil is initially so close - frescos of Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the pastoral Concert or Venus of Dresden - that still today paternity of certain works is disputed. The pastoral Concert, rediscovered in 1803 by the German writer Friedrich von Schlegel, and for which many drawings by Giorgione are known, from now on is allotted to Titien: this one, until around 1520, works out its work starting from the topics and of the searchs for its Master, while adopting a page layout and a pictorial technique which are clean for him. The Young girl with the mirror and Flora, both of 1515, take again framing with half-length bathed of natural light of the portraits of Giorgione, but their composition is articulated in coloured beaches which relegate to the second plan the drawing. Forsaking the profile for a presentation of face or three quarters, Titien starts a career of portraitist who will know his apogee in 1533 with the portrait of Charles Quint.
Among the favorite topics of Giorgione, that of the mirror will be treated on several occasions by Titien, in particular in the Young girl with the mirror and Venus with the mirror (1555). The reflection returned to the spectator evokes a response of painting to the sculpture, able simultaneously to show all the faces of the same character, while the surrounding of the figure by the artifice of the mirror contributes to complex the initial diagram.
The allegory is then in the middle of any representation. With Flora, Titien carries out its most accomplished work on this topic. The iconography is resulting directly from Leonardo da Vinci, but the figure itself, by reference to Boccace, is an image of the prostitute.
Of its first work to the fresco, Titien transposes into 1511 of the foreign formal designs to the reduced formats: monumentality of the characters and, especially, widening of the field of vision. In its research aiming at releasing itself from the rigid constraints of the linear prospect, it explores several ways which lead to empty the foregrounds and to make circulate the light on a fragmented pictorial matter, thus reinforcing the already existing means: sfumato, vapors veiling remote spaces, effects of back-light or tonalities of the ciels. With the Miracle of the newborn, the table from now on is built by juxtaposed chromatic masses. And the result of this first research is implemented in Noli me tangere of 1511-1512.
In 1519, Titien receives an ordering of importance: a retable of five panels for the church Santi Nazaro E Celso in Brescia. The unit will be completed in 1522. These years when it is freed from the heritage of Giorgione mark a turning in the career of Titien, whose workshop increases considerably.
Maturity In 1525, Titien conceives a Setting with the tomb where the shade which extends on the face and the bust from Christ conceals it partly with the eyes of the spectator and becomes a reflection, in charge of direction, darkness of the tomb which will absorb the skin. The following year, the painter finishes the Pesaro retable of the church of Frari in Venice, from which it had received order in 1519. Being pressed on the crowned texts, it renews the iconography and the composition: forsaking traditional frontality, it decentres the throne on which Marie sat between two immense columns. It is this same iconographic renewal that one finds in the program of decoration of mosaics of the ceiling of the sacristy of Saint-Marc, for which Titien makes the paperboards.
The period is favourable with the official orders, which flow and to the number of which it is necessary to announce those of the frescos for Fondaco dei Tedeschi and the palate of the Doges. In 1527, the bag from Rome leads to Venice Arétin, which binds friendship with the painter and who until his death will serve to him of intermediary near the princes and the Italian and European patrons. Thus Titien attends the crowning of Charles Quint in Bologna, which he works for Gonzague, Este, Rovere and Farnèse.
Years 1530 are characterized by a great serenity, sensitive in works like the Virgin to the rabbit, which will be used as model with “holy the later conversations”. Lengthily worked out, this fabric testifies to the constant searchs for Titien on the report of the figures to space and the landscape. It does not give up therefore the tradition of narrative painting and realizes in 1534-1539 the Presentation of the Virgin to the Temple, whose architectural decoration takes as a starting point Sebastiano Serlio, architect, sculptor and theorist who resided at Venice since 1528. These same years see spreading the new Roman and Tuscan designs by the means of the engraving, which answers at the request of cultivated customers. The orders are made so many that Titien must organize its workshop of Biri Grande in order to answer it and that it multiplies the copies of its works. It moves away then from the traditional naturalism which had inspired it up to that point and, in its Crowning of spines carried out of 1540 to 1542, it reaches what the historian of Italian art R. Pallucchini calls “the ultimate stage of this violence where the form acquires an autonomy abstracted compared to the color”.
Titien sees its European reputation of portraitist growing rich in 1542 with the execution by the portrait by Ranuccio Farnèse, young nephew of Paul III, work which poses it like the first large portraitist of childhood.
In 1545, the painter undertakes a series of long stays far from Venice. In October, it arrives at the pontifical court and, in March of the following year, it receives the Roman citizenship. But it fails in its attempt to obtain an ecclesiastical benefit for his Pomponio son. In January 1548, it is invited to Augsburg by Charles Quint. It there goes with his Orazio son and carries out many portraits, of which that of its host with horse. Then, at the request of Marie of Hungary, he undertakes a series on the Metamorphoses of Ovide. Its manner evolves slowly and announces the dissolved chromatism of the last years. Recipient of many fabrics, Philippe II of Spain, which succeeds his/her father, maintains with the old Master the faithful and friendly relations.
Last years In 1551, after a last voyage to Augsburg, where it brushes some historical portraits in a noble style (Philippe II in armor), the painter returns definitively to Venice, where it is elected member of Scuola Grande di San Rocco. True European capital, Venice is then a framework where music, theater, architecture open out in a climate of great freedom of thought but also of latent concern. In spite of the intense activity of the workshop, Titien feels more and more insulated. Its manner is misunderstood majority, and its concerns are expressed in works like the Holy Marguerite (1559, with the museum of Prado) and the Martyrdom of SAINT LAURENT (completed in 1567). Since 1560, it forsakes portrait, realizing only one self-portrait (1562) where the contrast between finished and informs it, which shocked its contemporaries, gives a strong power of expression to the images. In 1566, he is elected member of the Academy florentine.
His/her friends die, his house empties themselves. In 1575, one year before its death, it paints terrible Apollon and Marsyas: contours seem vague, the paste appears dirty, work with the fingers competes with that of the brush there to give to the unit a feeling of poignant violence. Titien dies out on on August 27th, 1576 in a deserted workshop, in the middle of Venice devastated by the plague.
The draftsman
The first in Venice, Giorgione signs its drawings of landscapes. For Titien, the drawing is a tool essential, put with the service of its reflection on the reports of the figure at the landscape. Under the influence To last, of which it shares the cosmic design of nature, Titien endeavors to return in its drawings a new glance to space; working on contrasts of shade and light by great articulated plans, it creates a depth which renews the art of the landscape.
The drawings of Titien find a prolongation important in the woodcutting. The productions of its workshop widely diffuse this new design of the landscape, where the forms are organized by luminous masses and where the figure is integrated harmoniously in nature.
But it is primarily on the kind of the portrait that the European reputation of Titien is established. Matured slowly in the absence of the model, each portrait is for the painter the occasion of a careful thought on returned personality and the page layout of the model. In the series which it creates during the years 1520, nonchalant Homme with the glove is the proclamation of a new design of the individual and relation which links the painter with his model. In their austerity, the sober color range and the neutral bottom, without landscape nor architectonic elements, give to the figure thus isolated a realism and a psychological truth news, which will be taken again by the romantic portrait.
Among works of a classicism not disguised, the Portrait of Laura Dianti of 1525 appears carrying Baroques elements. The movement of the two revolving figures, play of the cold and gilded colors, the face of the page cutting out on the whiteness of the sleeve of Laura: as many inventions which will know a long posterity. In 1529, the Portrait of Frederic Gonzague concludes this series and announces that of the orders of court.
The portraitist In 1533, Titien is the uncontested Master of the portrait: Charles Quint, Philippe of Spain, Paul III Farnèse are his models: the good offices of Arétin bear their fruits. Titien yields with the wishes of its silent partners without disavowing his esthetic ideal, and can combine its refinement chromatic and its research naturalists with the need for appearing the social status and moral of the model.
The current mannerist which crosses the years 1540 shows through in the portraits of these same years. Made objective becomes sometimes pitiless, and the major character of the model seeks it is accompanied by a faster technique of execution which confines sometimes with the draft. The Portrait of Arétin and the Portrait of a gentleman (also called the Young English or the Man with the glaucous eyes) raise both of this new manner. The portrait can then become a true historical document, as that of the pope Paul III in 1543 shows it.