Portrait of Philip II of Spain

The armoured Philip II everyone pictures is in the Prado, and it came out of the sittings the prince gave Titian at Augsburg in 1551, in a suit of inlaid armour still kept in the royal armoury in Madrid. What hangs here is a version of that same model, from the early 1550s, with the collar of the Golden Fleece at his throat. Vasari, writing in 1568, says Titian sent this picture to Cosimo I de' Medici, the Duke of Florence, so the portrait of a Spanish king entered a Florentine palace as a present from the painter. The gallery's catalogue credits Titian with the head and gives the rest to his workshop, which in those years was supplying courts with royal likenesses almost in series.