Portrait of a Young Man

Around 1515 Titian was still a young man himself, in his mid-twenties, and Venice had just lost the two painters who had run its workshops. Giorgione died in the plague of 1510, and old Giovanni Bellini, the city's grand master, had only a year or so left. That left the field open, and Titian took it, largely through portraits like this one. We do not know who the sitter was. That was already usual for these Venetian likenesses. Buyers wanted the quiet, self-possessed air that Giorgione had made fashionable, and Titian gave it to them with a firmer, more physical sense of the man than his teacher ever had.