Pain redheads to be embodied by Titian's work (8)
I believe the answer is:
irritant
'pain' is the definition.
(I know that irritant is a type of pain)
'redheads to be embodied by titian's work' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'redheads' could be 'rr' (two R's - R is the head of the word 'red') and 'rr' is present in the answer.
an anagram of 'titian' is 'iitant' which is present in the remaining letters.
No letters remain.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for irritant that I've seen before include "distraction" , "Source of continual annoyance" , "Trouble" , "Something that causes annoyance and bad temper" , "Something that annoys, a nuisance" .)