onality has been handed down in vivid contemporary accounts and through his work. He was earthy, extroverted, healthy, sensual, ambitious, and shrewd. He is also seen as having a peasant hardness and as being slightly unimaginative, hard working, avaricious, and talented. Members of his family had been lawyers and army officers, so the painter would already have had some standing in the community. He was born in a remote community, but he was transferred at a relatively early age to the nearest big city, Venice, because of his genius as a painter. He is said to have been about nine or ten years old at the time, and he was placed at the studio of the brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini (Gould 7-8).
Around 1507, Titian moved on to become assistant to one of the most controversial figures in Italian art, Giorgione of
...