To read more about Charlotte Mason picture study and to see the other picture study aids I have available, click here.
Tiziano, then, having adorned with excellent pictures the city of Venice, nay, all Italy and other parts of the world, deserves to be loved and revered by the craftsmen, and in many things to be admired and imitated, as one who has executed and is still executing works worthy of infinite praise, which shall endure as long as the memory of illustrious men may live.
Georgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists
Tiziano Vecelli, or Titian, was part of a slew of artists to whom I was introduced during one of my earliest terms of college. He was included in both my introductory Art History 101 class (also the class that inspired me to switch to an art history major) as well as my Renaissance art class as a pillar of Italian Renaissance art. A few things about him stuck with me, including the reddish hue from the ground he used to prepare his canvases that characterizes so many of his paintings, as well as the fact that he was a bit of an avant-garde artist for his time. He liked to try different techniques, poses, and formations in his paintings, and I think this was truly a benefit to art history. He is probably more well-known for his mythological and religious art, but I am particularly fond of his portraits. He had the ability to infuse the character of the sitter into these paintings, and I find them absolutely fascinating.
As a side note, I love the Renaissance as a whole but Italy, in particular, amazes me. It’s absolutely bewildering how much art, and magnificent art at that, Italy was producing from about the 14th century through to the 17th century. The fact, also, that it wasn’t all concentrated in one area on the Italian peninsula (or Europe, for that matter) is truly amazing as several hotspots of artistic achievement, including Florence, Rome, and Venice, bloomed independently. It would’ve been absolutely amazing to have been alive during that time to witness all of that beauty just after its creation.
Today I’m offering a free Picture Study Aid for Titian that includes the six images selected for the AmblesideOnline artist study rotation. This 24-page PDF offers a brief summary of the early life of Titian, key topics about six of his paintings, and six printable versions of the paintings (without artist name or titles) at the end.
I do also include a brief overview of Charlotte Mason picture study at the beginning of the file, however, I have also written posts here on the blog about why picture study is important and how we do it in both our home and homeschool co-op.
You can download the file at the link at the end of the post!
Caveats
This is by no means an exhaustive analysis or study of each piece, and that is intentional. I tried to keep it all very simple in the spirit of there being, “no talk about schools of painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes in later life, the first and most important thing is to know the pictures themselves. As in a worthy book we leave the author to tell his own tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as else-where we shut out the middleman.” (vol 6 pg 216)
Miscellaneous Resources
For enjoying art with children in general, I also included a page of art sources that I’ve found particularly good:
Web Gallery of Art
Art cyclopedia
Wikimedia Commons
WikiArt
For younger children, I highly recommend the Mini-Master series by Julie Merberg and Suzanne Bober. Also, the Touch The Art series by Julie Appel and Amy Guglielmo.
For both younger and older children, the Come Look With Me series by Gladys S. Blizzard is excellent.
Download
You may download it below for personal use in your own homeschool (Ambleside Online, another Charlotte Mason curriculum, or otherwise). And as always, if you have any feedback or suggestions, I would love for you to fill out my feedback form!
(Click here to download a PDF of JUST the artwork)
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