The Italian painter Titian (ca. 1488-1576) was a great master of religious art, a portraitist in demand all over Europe, and the creator of mythological compositions which for inventiveness and decorative beauty have never been surpassed.

Tiziano Vecellio, known in English as Titian, was born at Pieve di Cadore in the Alps north of Venice. Regarding the year of his birth, modern criticism tends to reject the traditional date of 1477. Although the evidence is conflicting, the statements of contemporaries such as Lodovico Dolce and Giorgio Vasari, plus the fact that Titian's earliest works date from 1508, make the birth date of about 1488/1490 more reasonable.

At the age of 9 Titian set out with his brother Francesco for Venice to enter the workshop of the mosaicist Sebastiano Zuccati. Not long thereafter Titian began to study painting with Giovanni Bellini. Soon Titian met Bellini's other pupil, Giorgione, with whom he collaborated on...