Madonna mit Kind

This comes from Titian's last years, when he was already old and had been the most sought-after painter in Europe for decades, working for popes and emperors. Late in life his handling loosened completely. He laid the paint on in thick, broken touches and let light flicker over the surface, so that up close much of the picture dissolves into rough marks and only settles into a figure at a distance. The Madonna and Child are large, close and plain, with no grand setting built around them. Scholars still argue over exactly when he painted it, and even whether every passage is his own hand rather than his busy Venice workshop. He went on painting in this thick, free way until plague swept Venice and killed him in 1576.