TITIAN (Tiziano Vecellio)
born 1473/1490 (probably c.1488/1490[1]), died 27 August 1576, was the leading painter of the 16th-century Venetian school of the Italian Renaissance. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called Da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth.

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 Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.

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 polychromatic modulations are without precedent in the history of Western art.

Titian, Madonna with Saint Catherine and a Rabbit, 1530

Titian, Organist

Titian, Gypsy Madonna, ca. 1510

Titian, Virgin Child with Saint John and Female Saint, 1530

Titian, Virgin and Child, 1570-1576

Titian, Venus of Urbino Mirror, 1538