After Vasari's Lives of the Most Famous Artists,The Life of Titian by the seventeenth-century Venetian artist and writer Carlo Ridolfi is the most important contemporary documentary source for our understanding of the great Renaissance artist. This new critical edition, the first translation into English of Ridolfi's biography, illuminates his life, his artistic production, and his early critical reputation. The editors address art-historical questions of attribution, provenance, and documentation that Ridolfi's biography raises. Two introductory essays present the nature, scope, and importance of the biography for the study of Titian and Venetian Renaissance art and place Ridolfi in the tradition of Renaissance biography and artistic literature. The annotations provide a useful and current bibliography drawn from both art history and literature. The Life of Titian will be of interest to a wide audience of scholars and students of the history of Renaissance art, literature, language, and culture.

The first definitive biography of the master painter in more than a century, Titian: His Life is being hailed as a "landmark achievement" for critically acclaimed author Sheila Hale (Publishers Weekly). Brilliant in its interpretation of the 16th-century master's paintings, this monumental biography of Titian draws on contemporary accounts and recent art historical research and scholarship, some of it previously unpublished, providing an unparalleled portrait of the artist, as well as a fascinating rendering of Venice as a center of culture, commerce, and power. Sheila Hale's Titian is destined to be this century's authoritative text on the life of greatest painter of the Italian High Renaissance.

This publication presents the most important early texts about Titian some for the first time in English.

Biographical accounts by several of Titian’s contemporaries, including Giorgio Vasari, Pietro Aretino, and Raffaele Borghini, trace the fascinating and prolific life of this master of the Italian Renaissance. As the most important member of the sixteenth-century Venetian school, Titian (ca. 1488–1576) reached a level of professional success rivaled only by Raphael, Michelangelo, and, later, Rubens. He was sought after by a range of patrons from Venice as well as northern Italian princes and, eventually, the papacy. Titian’s painting methods, particularly his use of color, influenced not only painters of the Renaissance but also future generations of Western artists. This richly illustrated volume also includes comments on Titian by El Greco.

One of the principal resources for study of Italian Renaissance art and artists, Vasari's Lives offers colorful, detailed portraits of the era's most representative figures. This single-volume edition spotlights 8 prominent artists.