Portrait of Count Antonio Porcia and Brugnera

By the later 1530s, when Titian painted this, he was the most sought-after portraitist in Europe, the man emperors and popes wanted for their likeness. This sitter is more local, a nobleman from Friuli on the Venetian mainland, Count Antonio Porcia. Titian sets him against a stone ledge with a calm landscape opening behind, the count's hand resting easily, his gaze steady and a little guarded. It is the pose Titian used to make a provincial lord look like a figure of real weight. On the ledge he signed his name in Roman capitals, TITIANVS, the Latin form he liked because it sounded like an artist of the ancient world. The picture hangs today in the Brera in Milan, in a room of Venetian painting from his own century.