Portrait of Marcantonio Trevisan, Doge of Venice

Marcantonio Trevisan was Doge of Venice for barely a year, elected in 1553 and dead in 1554. He was known less for politics than for a piety so severe that it reportedly wore him down in office. Titian shows him in the doge's robes and horned cap, one hand held out as if in address. There is a reason this portrait matters beyond the sitter. In 1577 a great fire tore through the Doge's Palace and burned the official portraits Titian had painted of the Venetian doges, so surviving versions like this one, from his workshop, carry the memory of a lost series. Trevisan looks out with the gravity of a man who treated the office as a religious burden more than an honour.