It happened one day that a Titian the brush fell while in Bavaria portraying Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. What happened could also have gone unnoticed except that the Emperor bent down to pick up the brush to everyone's amazement. Another time Charles V asked Titian to retouch a painting placed very high up and it was the emperor himself with a series of courtiers who moved a table so that the artist could climb it, and while the courtiers complained, the emperor silenced them saying “Princes have no end, but we have only one Titian”. Charles V's admiration for Titian was infinite to such an extent that he conferred upon him the title of count and named him Knight of the Golden Spur, and his sons made nobles of the empire.
Titian had only two rivals, Raffaello e Michelangelo, who lived less than him, leaving him the unchallenged lord of their era. A multifaceted genius who is remembered with an adjective coined in his name that indicates that particular tone of red-blonde that he preferred in his models, an infinite series of Venuses. He composed war, action and sacred scenes with funds attributable to his homeland, Cadore. Born in Pieve di Cadore around 1477, Titian Vecelio he came from a family of peasants and soldiers. Tradition has it that at the age of seven the boy painted a Madonna and Child on a wall of the house, using – it is said – the juice of pressed flowers. The father, recognizing his son's talent, decided to send him to Venice to see his uncle, so that he could learn the art.
It was a wonderful time, a time of gold and purple. In that historical period Henry VIII would have ascended the throne of England, the Borgias would have reached the pinnacle of their sinister power, Martin Luther would have started the Protestant Reformation. AND Venezia she was still queen of the sea and ruler of the Orient, and attracted visitors from every part of the world by the fame of her beauties, the erudition of her scholars, and the excellence of her artists.
Titian began his training as a mosaicist, but soon entered the Bottega di John Bellini, where he learned to grind and mix colors, soon learning the techniques of extracting pigments. Titian loved color and initially neglected shapes, but with commitment - and not a little - he managed to paint a Madonna called the Gypsy, an extraordinary work.
But to guard the turning point of his art, it was Giorgio Barbarelli, said Giorgione, also a pupil of Bellini. In fact, thanks to the suggestions of the young painter from Castelfranco Veneto, they both left the style of the Bellini school, to paint what they saw with a sort of lyricism.
Their way of painting of the period was quite similar and when certain clients were looking for painters to fresco a new building, the Fondanco dei Tedeschi, the two obtained the contract. Giorgione decorated the facade on the Grand Canal, while Titian the back, facing a secondary street. But it was Vecelio's work that drew the most praise, to the point that a quarrel about it between the two young painters marked the end of their friendship.
Giorgione died at only thirty years old, with Bellini already very old, Titian became the official painter of the Serenissima and obtained his first important commission, an Assumption for the Church of Santa Maria dei Frari. The canvas was large, 6,9 by 3,60 with figures arranged on three floors, the Virgin and angels who, however, did not satisfy the client due to the perspective which made the figures too large. But once the work was placed in its high place, artists from all over the world began to arrive in Venice. More convincing than success, it was the arrival of a messenger from the Imperial Court who offered to buy the painting by offering numerous golden shields.
Titian then began a long series of journeys from one palace to another, frescoing walls, portraying kings and emperors, archdukes and cardinals. Dad himself wanted to be portrayed by him. When Henry III of France came to Venice he was accompanied with full honors on a galley sailed by 400 oarsmen upon which had been placed a throne draped in gold brocade. Everyone was ready to satisfy his every wish, but the King had only one, to see Titian at work in his studio.
Glory did not make him forget his house in the mountains, in his paintings you don't see canals and gondolas, but the emotion of rustic stairs and the trees of his Alps. From Pieve di Cadore he had the barber's daughter come to Venice because kept a house and two illegitimate children.
As he got older he got into the habit of retouching his canvases often ruining them, as his disciples said.
At 90 he was still seen around Venice, straight and with a long white beard that made him look like an Old Testament patriarch, according to some scholars he lived up to 99 years in excellent health allowing him to continue painting. One of his most sensual canvases “The Nymph and the Shepherd” was painted at the age of 88. If the plague hadn't arrived in Venice, perhaps it would have passed the century of age.
According to critic George Agnew, wrote about him in The Listener of London: Titian reformed the pictorial language and the art of painting.
Now it's up to us to admire its beauty by retracing its history from Cadore to Venice.
