Zorzi da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione: an artist who has so few confirmed works attributed to him, and about whose life little is known. Yet, after a career span of just over ten years, Giorgione has achieved a fame that has remained unchanged over the centuries. Starting from Giovanni Bellini's lessons on spirituality and harmony between man and nature, and from the use of colour by Giovan Battista Cima da Conegliano, the master from Castelfranco offers a very particular synthesis of musical lyricism, connecting bodies and landscape with a soft and dense light. This tonal painting, set by Cima and Bellini, becomes with Giorgione the language of initiation of the formidable brood protagonist of the great Venetian 16th century, the season of Palma il Vecchio, Sebastiano del Piombo and Tiziano Vecellio.

Titian is the artist who best illustrates the revolution and triumph of colour, and hence the very art of the 16th century and beyond. The work of Titian (c. 1490-1576) represents the point of arrival for a whole pictorial tradition: his early emphasis on colour developed into the art of a mature and then elderly painter seeking to explore night and darkness, to dim hues, and to push the use of liquid and dusky tones to the very limit. A prolific painter and the head of a well-organised workshop, Titian was at the same time capable of perfectly meeting new tastes. By renewing and setting the standard for the official images and aesthetics of the ruling class of his day, he became the first truly European artist, praised to high heaven by his admirers. Particularly revealing is Ludovico Dolce's panegyric: 'the greatness and the power of Michelangelo, the sweetness and beauty of Raphael and the very colours of Nature herself'. Highly sought after by collectors, disputed by royal courts and pontiffs, the master from Cadore created works that are now on display in museums across the world. This volume exceptionally brings together some of Titian's greatest masterpieces, including his large altarpieces, in such a way as to illustrate the whole span of his career.