Portrait of Jacopo Sansovino

The old man in this portrait designed the view that millions of people still photograph. Jacopo Sansovino came to Venice in 1527, a Florentine sculptor and architect fleeing the sack of Rome, and he stayed for the rest of his long life. As chief architect to the basilica of San Marco he rebuilt the public heart of the city: the great library facing the Doge's Palace, the little loggetta at the foot of the bell tower, the mint where Venice struck its coins. By the time Tintoretto, a younger Venetian, painted him in the 1560s, Sansovino was in his eighties and those buildings were already the frame around the most famous square in Europe. Tintoretto gives him a dark ground and a steady, unshowy gaze, the look of a man long used to being obeyed by stonemasons. He died in 1570, past eighty, and the stone city he shaped is still standing exactly where he set it.