King Philip II of Spain

Around 1550 the sitter here was not yet a king. Philip was the son and heir of Charles V, the Habsburg emperor who ruled Spain, the Low Countries and much of the New World, and Titian was the family's favourite portraitist, summoned to paint the young prince as he was groomed to inherit half of Europe. Philip became king of Spain in 1556 and would send the Armada against England decades later. Look closely and the picture has two hands in it. Titian left the canvas unfinished when he died in 1576, and the crown, the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece at the neck, and the chair were all added afterwards by another painter to complete it. It reached Cincinnati as a bequest from the collector Mary Emery.