Portrait of a Woman

For a long time the label on this canvas said something quite different. It was catalogued as a portrait of Lavinia, Titian's daughter, painted by Veronese. Both halves of that have since been dropped. The museum now gives the picture to Titian and his workshop together, and calls the sitter an unknown lady. What is left is a canvas of two speeds. The face is fine enough to be Titian's own work, while the dress and its jewels are handled as routine studio labour, the sort of thing assistants finished while the master moved on. Portraits like this one, made around 1560, came out of a Venetian workshop running at volume. The first record of it in Spain is an inventory of the Buen Retiro palace in Madrid, in 1794. It is not on display.