The painter known as Titian led a long and successful career characterized by inventiveness and mastery of color. He was born and worked in Venice and apprenticed under Giovanni Bellini, just as fellow Venetian Giorgione had. Titian worked with Giorgione and is even thought to have helped finished Geiorgione’s enigmatic masterpiece The Tempest. By 1515 Titian had surpassed Giorgione and all the rest of his contemporaries and was considered the leader and master of the Venetian school. Throughout his long life he would be praised by intellectual circles and sought after by droves of collectors and members of the royal courts.
His royal portraits such as Charles V at the Battle of Mühlberg would be a model for future royal portraits and would be a much copied composition throughout the Baroque period. By 1520 his fame began to spread and received commissions not only in his hometown of Venice, but in the royal courts of Gonzaga and Este. This would make him one of the most acclaimed portrait artists in all of Europe. In 1533, after meeting Emperor Charles V Titian entered a relationship with the Spanish court that would last over thirty years. In the 1540s Titian visited Rome where he met Michelangelo during the starts of Mannerism. After leaving Rome he returned to Venice where he isolated himself from the mainstream, aside from a few visits to Charles V. His later works show a free handled style and superb use of patches of color to render form.
Besides some remarkable religious subjects such as the Assumption and the Pietá, much of Titian’s work comes from mythological and classical inspirations. One of his most well noted masterpieces is the Sacred and Profane Love (seen above) which was painted in 1514 and really put him on the map, helping to surpass Bellini as “Painter to the Republic.” It shows two woman representing the two types of love, who, despite the connotations of the title, do not call for a choice of the two, but rather a balance. The clothed woman on the left represents marriage and Earthly love. Marriage is a central point of the painting as it was a wedding gift of Nicolò Aurelio to his new bride Laura Bagarotto. The woman is not a portrait of Laura, but is meant to be an allegory of marriage in general. The whole theme represents fertility and love, with small details such as a pair of rabbits visible in the near background. The other woman is virtually nude and holds a lamp signifying eternal love on a more spiritual level. Cupid quietly stirs water between the two woman in a sarcophagus depicting a violent death, perhaps as a reference to the recent hanging of Laura’s father. The fact that water is being stirred in such a sarcophagus symbolizes how love can emerge and be reborn even from death.
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