Allegory

Sharing a name with Titian was a mixed blessing. Tiziano Vecellio the younger, nicknamed Tizianello, worked in the first half of the 17th century, long after his famous kinsman Titian had died. This Allegory takes up a theme Titian himself had painted, the ages of a human life measured against death. A young man and an old man appear together with a bare skull. The grouping was understood as a lesson about time, that youth and age lie along one road and the skull waits at its end. Tizianello left few paintings and is remembered as much for writing a short life of Titian as for his own work. This small canvas, a little over 70 centimetres on each side, is one of the few pictures that still carries his name.