Portrait of Bishop Girolamo Argentino

In August 1537 Girolamo Argentino was made bishop of Hvar and Brac, two Venetian islands off the Dalmatian coast, and that same summer Venice went to war with the Ottoman Empire, which put his new diocese on a front line. The portrait falls between that appointment and his death in March 1549, and the reason is painted on the stone parapet in front of him: a Latin line naming him bishop of Pharensis and Brachiensis, the old names of those two islands. It is also the only reason the sitter can be named at all. The hand is a different story. The Palatina files the picture simply as Venetian, after four centuries in which it was catalogued as a Titian, then a Giorgione in the Medici inventories of 1771, 1793 and 1802, then a Moroni, then a Tintoretto, then a Girolamo da Carpi. It has hung in the Sala di Ulisse since 1913.