Titian made the means of painting important and visible - both the brushwork that communicated his feeling about his subject, and the rough canvas that allowed him to create texture and surface. Titian's biographer Vasari commented that Titian had invented a new form of art "made up of bold strokes and blobs, beautiful and astonishing, because it makes paintings seem alive." In Titian's Ecce Homo,, painted at the end of his life, he uses these "bold strokes and blobs" to show us tragedy, pathos, hypocrisy and the intense drama of the moment.

Titian's success was helped enormously by circumstance. He lived and worked in one of the most exciting, sophisticated and wealthy cities in Europe, a "Renaissance Utopia". Its strategic geographical location and strong, democratic government had made Venice the centre of a successful commercial empire. Trade with the East and Northern Europe brought to the city luxury goods such as rich fabrics, spices and, most importantly for Titian, the best pigments for oil painting - lapis lazuli (ultramarine) from what is present-day Afghanistan; orange and yellow mineral pigments and azurite from Germany. Specialist colour merchants developed uniquely in Venice to provide pigments for the city's painters and glass and dyeing industries. Oil painting became the most important art in Venice - the less stable tempera fresco technique used in Florence and other Italian cities was badly affected by the humid atmosphere of the watery city. Exquisite colour also helped the Venetian painters to show off their civilized, luxurious lifestyle. Titian's painting technique depended on being able to buy pigments of the highest quality; these were available on his doorstep in Venice - his wealthy clientele enabled him to afford them, too.

The Venetians' special affinity for colour differed from the concerns of the Renaissance painters in Florence: for the Florentine artists, good drawing
(disegno ), based on a study of antique art, was more important than the sensitive use of colour (colorito ). Debate about the merits of the two approaches raged in sixteenth century Italy. Michelangelo spoke from his Florentine artistic roots when he remarked, when he saw Titian at work on his Danae, that Titian's art would be better if he had learnt to draw well.

Venice, because its exceptionally tolerant government encouraged freedom of expression and liberal thought, attracted a wide range of writers, poets and intellectuals, like Pietro Aretino - Titian's best friend and champion. Aretino was a ruthless social operator in Renaissance Italy, and his letters promoting the excellence of Titian's painting, published and circulated round the courts of Europe, nurtured Titian's career and reputation, bringing the painter all-important contacts with rich and influential patrons. He painted Aretino on numerous occasions - the best-known one, from 1545 (in the Pitti Palace Museum, Florence) was praised by Aretino himself for its "awesome power".