As the 16th Century began to unfold in the gilded city of Venice that rose much-admired above a sunken forest, a young man came down from the mountains of the Dogado, the Duchy of Venice, to be remembered as the most excellent of painters. An extraordinary artist and a brilliant ‘entrepreneur of himself’, as innovative in composing a work as he was in knowing how to sell it, in just a few years Titian - Tiziano Vecellio (1488/1490 -1576) - became the official painter of the Venetian Republic, known as the Serenissima, and a great artist much sought after by the richest, most famous courts in Europe. From Ferrara to Urbino, from Mantua to Rome and then to Spain with Charles V and his son Philip II, Titian spanned the century illuminating it with his paintings and inspiring artists for ages to come. By interpreting religion and mythology to perfection and showing immediate expressive power as a portraitist, he dominated the times he lived in, overshadowing his contemporaries, and remaining ever true to his motto: art is more powerful than nature. It was impossible for Tiziano Vecellio to give up his vocation, even when an easier road presented itself like a seemingly foregone conclusion: Titian came from a family of notaries from Pieve di Cadore, but neither the prospect of a wealthy life nor his love for the Dolomites could extinguish the indomitable fire that drove him, at a very young age, all the way to Venice to start his apprenticeship as a painter. For the whole of his life, Venice would continue to be the base he would use to go and conquer and create a true empire of color. Comparable to New York today, since it was inhabited by a high percentage of foreigners with cross-cultural influences from all over the world, the Serenissima Republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century was repeatedly threatened by the desolation of the plague, but was spared, with its exceptional concentration of beauty, power, and that free spirit which the revolutionary Titian embodied to perfection through color. In Titian. The Empire of Color, international experts, critics, scholars and artists recount the artist's life, his style, temperament and ambitions, and his ability to illuminate the path of art.
