Bildnis des Jacopo Strada

Most portraits of this era freeze the sitter looking straight at you. Titian caught Jacopo Strada mid-transaction instead. Strada was an antiquities dealer and court antiquary to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II in Vienna, and Titian painted him around 1567 doing exactly his job. He leans forward and holds out a small marble statuette of Venus, presenting it to someone standing just outside the frame, a buyer we never see. Around him is his stock in trade: coins, books, ancient torsos. The gold chain at his neck was likely the honor Maximilian had given him the year before. The inscription at the upper right names him a Roman citizen and imperial antiquary, aged 51, in 1566.