Philip II in Armour

Titian painted this in Augsburg in 1551, where the young prince Philip had come to the imperial court of his father, Charles V. Philip stands in a full suit of parade armour made by the Augsburg master Desiderius Colman, one hand resting near a plumed helmet on a crimson-covered table. Philip was honest about it in a letter, admiring the likeness but noting Titian had worked in haste and wishing he had time to redo it. The armour outlived the sitting. A version of this very image was sent to England a couple of years later during the marriage negotiations with Mary Tudor, a portrait doing the work of introducing a foreign husband before he arrived. Behind him rises a single pale column, a device Titian used again and again to prop up the dignity of the men he painted for the Habsburg court.