Giustiniani-Bildnis

Around 1500, Venetian painters began giving portraits something new, not just a face and fine clothes but a mood, a sense of the person thinking. This young man, in a quilted doublet once red and now faded to lilac, leans on a stone parapet and looks out with a slight, guarded shyness. For centuries no one knew who painted him. The name Giorgione was only attached in 1887, by a connoisseur reading the brushwork, and it stuck, though some scholars still argue the hand is that of the young Titian, Giorgione's rival. What is more certain is the date, close to 1503, and the family whose collection kept the picture for generations near Padua, the Giustiniani.