Lucretia and her Husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus

Around 1515 the young Titian was working in the long shadow of Giorgione, the Venetian painter who had died of plague a few years earlier, and turning out half-length figures of women that blur the line between portrait and story. This is one of them, so close to Giorgione's manner that some scholars still hand it to another Venetian, Palma Vecchio. The subject is disputed too. The museum reads the man as Lucretia's husband, Collatinus, though most sources see her attacker, Tarquin, and the Roman tale ends with Lucretia's suicide. Titian would return to that grim story more than 50 years later. Here the drama is all in the pressure of the two bodies and the gold thread of her sleeve.