Portrait of a Man Holding a Book

The red-haired man in this portrait holds a book and wears a sword, which around 1540 announced two things at once, learning and noble rank. His clothes say something more. The sleeves are slashed to show the fabric beneath, his laces end in metal tips called aglets, and pearls dot his collar and cuffs. Venetian men of his standing in those years dressed in robes of a single solid colour, so the museum concludes he was probably not from Venice at all. Nobody knows who he was. In 1901 the painting's owner in Palermo, the Count of Francavilla, published a booklet naming him as Giovan Paolo Baglioni, lord of Perugia. Baglioni had been beheaded in Rome in 1520, about 20 years before the date the museum now gives the canvas, and his name has not stayed with it. Titian signed it at the lower left, Ticianus.