Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio - Titian is considered to have been the greatest 16th-century Venetian painter, and the shaper of the Venetian coloristic and painterly tradition. He is one of the key figures in the history of Western art. Titian, whose name in Italian is Tiziano Vecellio, was born in Pieve di Cadore, north of Venice, by his own account in 1477; many modern scholars prefer to advance the date to about 1487. In Venice, he studied with Gentile Bellini and then with Giovanni Bellini, but only the latter left a lasting imprint on his style.