I just finished “Titian, His Life” by Sheila Hale. An 860-page biography. It basically tells the story of every single day of his 87-year life. Not sure how you can pack so much information into a single book. The Renaissance painter always maintained a large studio with tons of assistants. He could crank out many paintings with his art assembly line. As a result, he accumulated a large amount of wealth. It was needed to keep the operation going. The parts of the paintings he did himself were very arduous and time consuming. Sometimes he’d do the entire painting himself, depending on the client. Other times, the assistants he taught did much of the work and he added his touches as needed to finish. He was an intense perfectionist. He pushed his style very hard to be compared with his rival, Michelangelo. They lived at the same time but never met. Over time, hundreds of his paintings were lost, stolen, burned in multiple fires, forgotten, damaged, or just misplaced. Luckily hundreds have survived. No one will forget this portrait I did of him though.
