Der heilige Dominikus

When Titian painted this around 1565 he was an old man, probably in his late seventies, and his brushwork had loosened into something startling for its time, patches and streaks of paint that only pull into a figure when you step back. He signed it Ticianus. For a long time no one was sure who the sitter was. Old inventories simply called it the portrait of a Dominican monk, and one scholar guessed it might be Titian's own confessor. A cardinal's will from 1611 settled it as Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order, on his way into the Borghese collection in Rome. Look for the thin gold ring of a halo, and the shaft of light that falls across his outstretched hand.