Exemplary Image for the Text 3

Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos




This is a painting by Tiziano Vecellio, better known as the Renaissance painter Titian. Titian studied to be an artist pretty much his whole life and was named the official painter of the Italian Republic in 1516. He was awarded many other honors by the court of emperor Charles V of the holy Roman empire throughout the course of his life. I first saw this picture in a textbook I had for a Highschool art class. I like the style of it a lot. As with most famous paintings from the Renaissance, it has a lot of detailed illustration with mythological/religious tones in the story it tells. However, Titian's signature in his style is that he loved to use strong and simple colors with strength of contrasts between figures and backgrounds. Titian wasn't a Renaissance man in the same sense of people we studied in the book (with advances in geometry and typefaces), but I feel it's relevant because it's another example of how illustration progressed from Albrecht Durer's pioneering developement in detail to magnificent colored paintings in the Renaissance era.