Portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga is a painting by Venetian artist Titian
Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino was the eldest of the seven children of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, and Isabella d'Este. Her father was a notorious libertine,... and her mother, a gifted patroness of the arts of the late Italian Renaissance. On 25 September 1509, aged just sixteen, she married Francesco Maria I della Rovere, duke of Urbino, son of Giovanni della Rovere, duca di Sora e Senegaglia, and Giovanna da Montefeltro, and nephew of Pope Julius II. Their two sons and three daughters would all have progeny. Eleonora, who was largely responsible for the internal government of Urbino during her husband's exile, was an important patron of the arts in her own right. A princess of the highest culture, she was the friend of Pietro Bembo, Sadolet and Baldassarre Castiglione, as well as the poet Torquato Tasso. Titian painted her once formally , but her face appears to be recognisable in three other Titian paintings of about that time: 'La Bella', 'Girl in the Fur Cloak' and possibly the 'Venus of Urbino' commissioned by her son Guidobaldo.more
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio known in English as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno , in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth. Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" , Titian was 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, would 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 changed drastically but he retained 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.more
The Italian Renaissance was the earliest manifestation of the general European Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement that... began in Italy around the end of the 13th century and lasted until the 16th century, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe. The term Renaissance is in essence a modern one that came into currency in the 19th century, in the work of historians such as Jacob Burckhardt. Although the origins of a movement that was confined largely to the literate culture of intellectual endeavor and patronage can be traced to the earlier part of the 14th century, many aspects of Italian culture and society remained largely Medieval; the Renaissance did not come into full swing until the end of the century. The word renaissance means “rebirth”, and the era is best known for the renewed interest in the culture of classical antiquity after the period that Renaissance humanists labelled the Dark Ages. These changes, while significant, were concentrated in the elite, and for the vast majority of the population life was little changed from the Middle Ages.more