How old do you think he was when Titian painted the above sensuous nudes of “Diana and Actaeon”?

He was at the age of eighty years. Eighty!
Can you believe that? How could he maintain the youthful energy and stamina—let alone libido? If you’re in your twenties, your life doesn’t seem to have been started yet. When you’re in your fifties, you still have thirty years to accomplish something if any.

At least, Titian gives us a hope, by way of his paintings, that we can have a long way to achieve our life goal.

What was it like when Titian came to the world?

Grieving over the disappearance of arts that had once flourished in the ancient world, the architect Leon Battista Alberti came to Florence. To his delight, Alberti met several talented artists. They even surpassed the ancients. Some of them had discovered new arts and sciences. Alberti caught their spirit and codified new rules of perspective and determined harmonious proportions for his architecture by measuring musical intervals. Other Florentine artists invented ideal proportions for the human form, dissecting corpses to learn anatomy or composing pictures upon mathematical formulas.

Among those talented artists in Florence was Michelangelo, one of the best artists of the Renaissance. He found landscape painting trivial and portraiture amlost as unsatisfactory. His greatest obsession was the human figure, which he employed as the expression of man's struggle against the forces of destiny.

The Venetian school soon rivaled Florence. Its richly painted nudes and sensitive landscapes established an enduring tradition in European art. In Venice sensuality was quite assertive and the Venetian painters endowed their compositions with mature, unblushing nudes on the humanist theory that the naked body was a symbol of innocence and its beauty a reflection of intellectual or spiritual splendor. They saw no conflict between flesh and spirit. Their uninhibited love for the body recreated a concept of the nude that was as voluptuous and idealized as that of the ancient artists whom they longed to equal.

Florence preferred demure female nudes, and Botticelli’s Venus seems almost virginal. Michelangelo, however, idealized the male body while the Venetian artists turned to the female form for the more subtle details of its soft contours.

So, how did Titian go through his life?

Born in Pieve di Cadore and christened as Tiziano Vecellio in 1477 (assumed because of no concrete evidence), he moved to Venice where, still in his boyhood, he studied first in the modest workshop of the mosaic artist Sebastiano Zuccato. Then he switched to the better-known artist—Gentile Bellini. Afterward, Titian entered the school of Giovanni Bellini where he met Giorgione of Castelfranco, his real master.

Venice was only city in Italy to be free from the troubles that characterised the early 16th century political scene, one of the saddest and most dramatic moments of Italian history. A series of wars and invasions had in a short time made Italy a pawn in the hands of the great European powers and in 1599 it had fallen under Spanish rule. But far from being an obstacle to the development of Italian art and culture, the unstable conditions seemed to favor its development throughout Europe, with its most celebrated exponents moving from one European court to another.

The politically non-existent Italy contrasts paradoxically with a country, which dominates the European cultural scene, taking first place in the fields of letters and arts. Venice, the only politically stable city, soon became a refuge for writers and artists. It was thanks to the arrival of outsiders such as Sansovino and Aretino that the city, which had up to then maintained its many trading links with the East and been more reluctant than other Italian cities to adopt the innovations of the Renaissance, could take on that new "modern" dimension which had been lacking. Thus, between the years 1530 and 1540 Venice became a great centre for publishing, letters and the arts and enjoyed a position of hegemony on the European scenes.

It was at this time that Titian reached artistic maturity and in this favorable climate his fame grew and spread. Titian’s works were acclaimed from the beginning despite the number of great artists working in Venice in the period around the end of the 15th and early 16th centuries: Gentile Bellini, Giorgione, Carpaccio and also Lorenzo Lotto, Palma il Vecchio, Giovanni Bellini and his many followers, including Pordenone. The fact that Titian was commissioned to paint part of the lost frescoes for the "Fondaco dei Tedeschi" at Rialto in 1508, shows in what high esteem his early works were held in "official" circles.

Within a short time Titian was to dominate uncontested the Venetian art scene, frequently princes, dodges and popes who were to admire him, patronise him and honor him with titles and gifts as few other artists in history. Titian’s early period was intense; he painted a great number of works which show clearly the influence of Giorgione: these include the portrait known as "Ariosto", the "Pastoral concert" now in the Louvre, the "Noli me tangere" in the National Gallery in London.

This evident influence of Giorgione in Titian’s early works has in the past caused some problems in attributing a work; yet it is already clear that where Giorgione makes landscape a major protagonist, the young Titian while giving the natural element importance, uses it to complement the figures. It is this constant search for a total correspondence between the psychological/sentimental relationship of the character and the formal harmony of the composition that leads Titian to that perfect balance between form and expression that is the basis for the classicism. A classicism that has been defined "cromatico" because of the determinant role of the quality and nature of color.

To this great period of Titian's oeuvre belong a series of masterpieces where monumental style and formal harmony combine in one of the most sublime interpretation of the classical world: Flora in the Uffizi, Sacred and Profane Love in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The now famous Titian was invited by Bembo in 1513 to enter the pope's service in Rome but he refused in order to consolidate his position In Venice. He continued to produce one masterpiece after another, without uncertainties or failures and in 1517 was acclaimed official artist of the Serenissima. He was given the "sensaria" of the "Fondaco de Tedeschi" which gave him a considerable annuity and regular payments for every portrait of the Dodge.

Meanwhile, in 1516, the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso I D'Este, for whose study he painted three canvases with a mythological subject, had contacted Titian: the Homage to Venus, Bacchanal in the Prado, Bacchus and Ariane in the National Gallery in London. In this period he also painted his first great altarpieces which mark an important stage in the development or Venetian art with the introduction of large-scale figures in the style of Michelangelo. The Assumption altar piece in the Frari church in Venice and the Polyptych in the church of Santi Nazzareno e Celso in Brescia. Outside Venice Titian travelled to Ferrara and Mantua, where he met Giulio Romano and formed a friendship with Federico Gonzaga, for whom he painted a portrait, now in the Prado.

At the height of fame, a friend of eminent literary and artistic figures in Venice, Titian frequented all the princes of the time, for whom he painted many portraits. These were generally in the style of court portrait but also had great experience, moving more and more towards a psychological understanding of the sitter. Titian's relationship with the courts, advised and guided by his friend Pietro Aretino, a specialist in public relations, are masterpieces of diplomacy. His main contact was with the imperial court of Charles V, who gave him the title of "Palatine count" and "Chevalier of the golden Spur" together with a generous annuity. Titian painted Portraits and devotional works for the emperor and the wonderful poesy for his son, Philip II.

In all he painted forty works for the Hapsburgs but was equally prolific in response to requests from other powerful families. He worked for the Duke of Urbino and above all, again solicited by Bembo, he returned to the papal court, painting portraits for Paolo III and other members of the family. Titian's fame was by now unequalled, rivalling even that of Michelangelo.

His first biographer relate with amazement how event the Emperor Charles V paid him the honor of kneeling down to pick up a brush he had dropped. This may seem trivial to us but, bearing in mind the rigid etiquette of the time, it is clear that the episode was interpreted as a symbol: homage paid by the personification of earthly power to the "genius" of the artist. It was a triumph for the master and for art in the new society, which at last welcomed artists among its highest ranks alongside with princes, rich bourgeoisie and men of letters.

For their part contemporary critics did not hesitate to proclaim Titian the supreme master, praising his wonderful "use of color". Dolce writes: "not only did he surpass his predecessors in Venice, Giorgione and Bellini, who "sparked off" his career, but he has equalled his major contemporaries, Rafael and Corregio, and even improved upon them in his way of adding modern truth to figurative style". Lomazzo speaks of "the wonder of perfection of color".

It is for this use of color that Titian’s work has been celebrated throughout the world over the centuries, and still today we do not tire of admiring the marvellous vibrations of light, the total mastery of tone. If this constant reference to "color" risks becoming somewhat monotonous, we must remember that Titian's long activity was an endless research into the use of color, from the soft "impasto" of the early works to the rapid brushstrokes bathed in light which began the process of reducing the importance of form and volume in favor of color and light, leading, in his late works, to the almost total break up of form.

Attaining fame and power did not, in fact, prevent Titian from continuing his search for new forms of expression. His style developed throughout his long life, marked by new achievements, each of which signalled an essential stage in the development of modem painting.

Titian was nearly ninety years old when he died on August 27, 1576, victim of the plague which ravaged Venice. He continued to paint to the end of his life, causing Vasari to comment on visiting Titian: "despite his great age, he was busy at his painting, with his brushes in his hand".