In Vasari's "Lives of the Artists," Vasari offers us a fairly in-depth
             portrait of Tiziano de Cadore (most commonly and hereafter to be referred
             to as "Titian") both as one of the great painters of the Renaissance and as
             an influential and beneficent individual. Indeed, the portrait of Titian
             that Vasari offers is one of a prodigiously and supremely talented youth
             whose early paintings went through a series of exceptionally dramatic,
             although always impressive, shifts. Indeed, many of these changes were due
             to his alternation tutelage, as well as the fact that, hailing from Venice,
             he was not initially in contact with the changes in painting then going on
             in Rome. Specifically, Early works of Titian betray a general ignorance of
             the resurgent classicism and historical study of painting then occurring in
             Rome, but with the arrival of some Roman-schooled painters, he adapted his
             style to be more in tune with the Roman one, while retaining much of the
             vigor and energy of the Venetian painting of his youth. Titian later
             traveled to Rome and found much success there, but he ultimately returned
             again to Venice. Indeed, his style changed yet again as he aged, but these
             changes only reflected Titian's amazing strength and versatility as a
             painter and revealed the very elements of his style and sensibilities that
             make us remember him even today, hundreds of years after his death.
             Indeed, much of the mystique surrounding Titian can be derived from
             his own enormous individual talent. Even as a young child he should an
             enormous interest in a and talent for painting, and it was these factors
             that convinced his father to apprentice him with the great northern painter
             He, seeing that the boy was much inclined to painting, put him with
             the famous painter Gian Bellini, under whose discipline he studied
             drawing, and showed himself in a short time to be endowed by nature
             wi...