Grand Tour Copy Titian (N/A)
Birthplace/Origin: N/A
Biography/Statement:
The traditional date of Titian’s birth was long given as 1477, but most later critics favored the date of 1488/90. Titian was the son of a modest official, Gregorio di Conte dei Vecelli, and his wife, Lucia. He was born in the small village of Pieve di Cadore, located high amid mountain peaks of the Alps, straight north of Venice and not far from the Austrian Tyrol. At the age of nine he set out for Venice with his brother, Francesco, to live there with an uncle and to become an apprentice to Sebastiano Zuccato, a master of mosaics. The boy soon passed to the workshop of the Bellini family, where his true teacher became Giovanni Bellini, the greatest Venetian painter of the day. Titian’s early works are richly evident of his schooling and also of his association as a young man with another follower of the elderly Giovanni Bellini—namely, Giorgione of Castelfranco.