Portrait of a Member of the House of Farnese

Around 1525 Titian was the leading painter in Venice, deep in work on the Pesaro altarpiece for the Frari church. Venetian portraits from those years are often hard to assign, because several painters had formed their manner in the same circle around Giorgione. This one once carried the name of Sebastiano del Piombo, a Venetian from that circle who had moved to Rome in 1511. In the 20th century the art historians Edoardo Arslan and then Wilhelm Suida gave it to Titian, and Francesco Valcanover's 1969 catalogue of his paintings lists it at about 1525. The young man's own name has not come down to us. Only the traditional title ties him to the Farnese family. The canvas belongs to the counts of Schönborn and hangs at Schloss Weißenstein in Pommersfelden, the Franconian palace built between 1711 and 1718 for Prince-Bishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn, whose picture collection is still kept there.