John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony

The cut on his cheek is still bleeding, and it should not be. John Frederick of Saxony took that wound in April 1547, when the emperor's army beat the league of Protestant princes he led and took him prisoner. Titian only reached Augsburg, where the captive was held, in February 1548, ten months later. So the fresh blood is a reconstruction, built from the printed account of the capture that the courtier Luis de Avila published in 1549, and probably from the armour itself, which was later kept in the royal armoury in Madrid, rather than from a sitting. Titian painted the same man twice for Mary of Hungary, the emperor's sister. In the second portrait, now in Vienna, the wound has healed. The museum notes that the workshop had a large part in this canvas. It is not on display.