Bildnis des Andrea dei Franceschi

Around 1532 Titian was the most sought-after portraitist in Venice, painting emperors and princes, and here he turned to a fellow Venetian who had climbed about as high as a commoner could. Andrea dei Franceschi came from the citizen class, not the nobility, yet had risen to grand chancellor of Venice in 1529, an office held for life and outranked only by the doge himself. Titian shows him in middle age in a heavy dark robe, sober and self-possessed, a career civil servant at the summit of his world. Franceschi liked the result. His will of 1535 records that he owned two portraits of himself by Titian, and more than one version survives today.