Titian

Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, was born in Pieve di Cadore in the Veneto, probably around 1488. He trained in Venice under Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione, and after Giorgione's death became the dominant painter of the Venetian school and one of the most sought-after artists in Europe. His patrons included Charles V, Philip II of Spain, and Pope Paul III. His Venus of Urbino (1538), painted for the Duke of Urbino, is among the most consequential paintings in Western art. It takes the convention of the mythological nude and strips away the mythology while keeping the form. The figure is called Venus. She is clearly a woman in a domestic interior. She looks directly at the viewer. The painting is the origin point of the tradition that runs through Velázquez's Rokeby Venus, Goya's Maja Desnuda, Ingres's Grande Odalisque, and Manet's Olympia. Every artist who painted a reclining female nude was deciding what to do with what Titian had done. He also painted a series of works called poesie for Philip II — mythological subjects drawn from Ovid, kept in the king's private apartments. He died in Venice in 1576, probably during the plague, at an age that remains disputed. He was buried with exceptional ceremony in the Frari.

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