(b c. 1515; d Venice, before 23 Nov 1576). Painter, nephew of (1) Francesco Vecellio. The second son of Titian, he trained in his father’s workshop and accompanied him to Rome in 1545 and to Augsburg in 1548. Vasari mentioned him favourably, particularly his portrait of the musician Battista Ceciliano (untraced), executed in Rome. Other sources and his few surviving works suggest, however, that he was an inadequate painter, perhaps with a talent for adapting or copying his father’s works, as in, for example, a Venus and Adonis (untraced). In the 1550s he painted the polyptych in S Andrea, Serravalle (Vittorio Veneto), representing the Virgin and Child Enthroned with SS Andrew and Peter, the Annunciation, and the Coronation of the Virgin. The Assumption of the Virgin in Sargnano parish church (Belluno) can also be ascribed to him, but the donor is a later addition. Titian held Orazio in high esteem, and in 1564, certainly owing to his father’s influence, he competed successfully against Jacopo Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese for the commission to paint the Battle of Castel Sant’Angelo (destr. 1577) for the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. His limitations as a painter are obvious both in the congested altarpiece (c. 1559) in the church at Sorisole (Bergamo) and in the reliquary shutters in S Biagio, Calàlzo (Belluno), painted in 1566, which are stiff compositions, probably adapted from models by Titian and Jacopo Bassano. Works executed in collaboration with his father include the large Flight from Egypt (St Petersburg, Hermitage) and the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (London, Hampton Court, Royal Col.).

Part of the Vecellio family

• Vecellio, Orazio
  • Bembo, Pietro
  • Titian, §I, 3(i)(b): `Late style’, mid-1540s and after: Religious and mythological pictures
  • Vecellio