Jacopo Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, being presented by Pope Alexander VI to Saint Peter

This is a very early Titian, painted in his first years, and it began as a thank-offering. Jacopo Pesaro, a Venetian nobleman made a bishop and put in command of the Pope's fleet, had helped win a naval victory over the Ottoman Turks at Santa Maura in 1502, a rare bright spot in a war Venice was mostly losing. He commissioned this picture to give thanks for it. So the painting is a scene of introduction. Pope Alexander VI, one of the Borgia popes, presents the kneeling Pesaro to Saint Peter, who sits enthroned, while galleys and a banner in the background nod to the sea fight. The design follows a Venetian formula for such votive pictures, and the museum thinks the older master Giovanni Bellini, in whose workshop Titian trained, may have laid it out and left the young painter to carry it through.