Portrait d'homme, la main sur la ceinture

Around 1520 the old master Giovanni Bellini had just died, and Venice's painters were sorting out who would take his place. Titian, barely past 30, was pulling ahead of the rest. This unnamed man stands turned slightly toward us, one hand resting easily on his belt, at home in his own skin. Nobody has ever pinned down who he was, and that is almost the point. Titian cared less about listing a sitter's rank than about catching the way a self-assured man simply holds himself in a room. The dark, plain background throws all the attention onto the face and that relaxed hand. It is the kind of portrait that kept Venetian patrons, and soon half the courts of Europe, coming to him for the next 50 years.