Portrait of the Doge Sebastiano Venier

The title calls him doge, but when Tintoretto painted this, shortly after 1571, Sebastiano Venier was not yet head of the Venetian state. He was the commander of the Venetian fleet, and in October of that year, at 75, he had led its galleys at Lepanto, off the western coast of Greece, where the allied fleets of Venice, Spain and the Pope defeated the Ottoman navy. The portrait was made to keep that service in view. Tintoretto worked in effect as a painter to the Republic, and his task here was a prestige image of a Venetian victory as much as a likeness of an old man. Venier came home a hero. In 1577, at 81, he was elected doge unanimously, and he died in March 1578, less than a year later.