This research aims to retrace the reception of the art of Titian in the Southern Netherlands from about 1550, when his fame reached its peak at Brussels court, to about 1600, before the crystallization of his artistic “canone” and the developments of the XVIIth century that led to the so-called “Europeanisation of Venetian art”. Whereas the Titianism of the XVIIth century painters Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and Anton van Dyck (1599-1641) had been thoroughly investigated, the timeframe immediately antecedent presents some gaps and unsolved questions. In particular, did the Flemish artists develop a homogeneous and unequivocal “idea of Titian”, or there were many? And which were the reasons for selecting and using or refusing specific aspects of Titian’s art? In the first chapter, I analyse the court environment of the Brussels court and especially the roles of Charles V (1500-1558), Mary of Hungary (1505-1558) and Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1518-1586) in selecting and directing Titian’s production for the court. Their political necessities, artistic taste, and subscription to a language of power oriented towards an all’antica idiom shaped the idea of Titian in the Netherlands. This idea was inherently classical, dealing with Michelangelism and with the Central-Italian art, and the pictorial style was far from the glazed and polished one of the Flemish masters, but it was also not yet the “pittura a macchia” described in 1568 by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). The second and the third chapters are devoted to Netherlandish artists who had a direct relation to the Habsburgs, being both court painters for Charles V first and for Philip II (1527-1598) after. The first, Michiel Coxcie (1499-1592), was a history painter who specialised in altarpieces and religious works following the novelties of Roman art, in particular Raphael’s. Being one of the favourite artists of the Brussels court, he was Titian’s peer, and many of their works were hanging next to each other in the Habsburgs palaces. Coxcie used Titian’s ...