Self-Portrait

Painters in the 16th century were ranked as craftsmen, closer to carpenters and dyers than to gentlemen. Titian broke out of that. In 1533 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth made him a knight of the Golden Spur and a Count Palatine, an extraordinary honour for a man who worked with his hands. In this self-portrait, painted in Venice around 1550, he wears the proof of it, the emperor's heavy gold chain wound three times across his chest, while he turns aside mid-thought rather than meeting our eye. He was in his sixties here and working for kings and popes across Europe. Look closely and the gold chain and the white shirt dissolve into rough, broken dabs of paint that only pull into focus when you step back, the loose late manner Titian was inventing in exactly these years.