Ritratto d'uomo

This is early Titian, painted around 1512, when he was in his twenties and just emerging from the shadow of his teacher Giorgione in Venice. We do not know who the man is. The canvas has been trimmed on the right, and the surface is worn, so a parapet and the rest of a gloved hand that were probably once visible are now lost. Even so the pose carries a striking self-possession, and that has led some scholars to wonder whether the sitter is Titian himself. What is certain is the picture's long afterlife. Both Rembrandt and Van Dyck knew it in the 17th century, and the calm, three-quarter turn of the head fed directly into their own self-portraits. It came to New York in 1913 as part of the Altman bequest.