Portrait of Titian

This is Titian looking at himself, though the hand that painted it was not his. Around 1600, some 20 years after Titian died, an unknown artist copied one of the self-portraits the old Venetian master had made, and it is that copy the Uffizi holds. It shows him late in life, bearded and grave, the way he chose to present himself. The Medici had it by 1681, and it later joined the gallery's remarkable collection of artists' self-portraits, begun by Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici and still growing today. A copy can seem the lesser thing, yet for centuries this was how the face of a great painter travelled, house to house and country to country, long before photography. It now hangs in the Vasari Corridor, the raised passage the Medici built across the river so they could cross Florence without going down into the streets.