Portrait of Clarissa Strozzi

Titian painted this in Venice in 1542. The sitter is a two-year-old, Clarissa Strozzi, daughter of a wealthy Florentine family living in Venice in exile after falling out with the Medici back home. Giving a whole canvas to a small child was almost unheard of then, and this is one of the first independent child portraits in Italian art. Titian treats her seriously. She stands at a carved stone table, a little wary, one hand steadying her small spaniel while she offers it a twist of bread. Around the table's base he carved a frieze of dancing putti, stone children playing beneath the real one. A Venetian writer of the day praised the picture warmly, and it survives now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.