Bildnis des Vincenzo Mosti

Titian painted this young man around 1520, when he was working for the Este court at Ferrara, and it is almost a demonstration of how much a portrait can do with barely any colour. The sitter wears greys and whites and soft blacks, and Titian pulls a dozen shades out of them, the sheen of quilted silk, the matte of wool, the warm skin lit against a plain ground. The man was a Mosti, a family in the service of the Este dukes, though whether it is Vincenzo or one of his brothers has never been settled. Nor was the attribution steady. For a long time the gallery in Florence listed the picture as only a copy after Titian, until cleaning brought the real hand back.