Renaissance · Europe · Culture

1576

Titian Dies in Venice

1576

The enormous Venetian painter Tiziano Vecellio, who had painted emperors, popes, and pagan goddesses for sixty years, died during an outbreak of plague in Venice, perhaps of that disease. He was nearly ninety. Looters broke into his studio within hours of his death and stripped it bare. His seven-decade career encompassing portraiture, mythology, and landscape made him arguably the most versatile painter in Western art history.