Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle

In 1548 the Emperor Charles V held an imperial diet at Augsburg, a year after his army had crushed the Protestant princes at Mühlberg. He called Titian up from Venice to paint the victorious court, and this was one of the faces waiting for him. Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle was then bishop of Arras and, though barely 30, already the churchman running much of the Emperor's business. Titian sets a clock at his elbow, a detail his contemporaries would have read as prudence and self-command, the working virtue of a statesman. The black clothes and the gloved hand carry the same quiet authority. Granvelle went on to serve Charles's son Philip II and to become a cardinal.