Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian, is an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school.

He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the Republic of Venice.

During his lifetime he is often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth.

Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the famous final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian is one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects.

His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, will exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.

During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changes drastically but he retains a lifelong interest in color.

Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of polychromatic modulations are without precedent in the history of Western art.