Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio, understood in English as Titian, was an Italian painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was recognized early in his own lifetime as a very skilled painter, and his reputation has in the stepping in centuries never ever suffered a decline. In 1590 the art theorist Giovanni Lomazzo declared him “the sun amidst little stars not just among the Italians but all the painters of the world.”