Ritratto di un giovane

This is early Titian, painted around 1510, when he was barely into his twenties and Venetian portraiture was still finding its modern form. The picture is tiny, no bigger than a hand, on a poplar panel, and its boldest move is how close it stands to the sitter. Titian crops the young man so tightly that the top of his cap and both his arms fall outside the frame, pushing the face right up against you. The contours are soft, the brushwork open, the colour warm and glowing. That nearness was new. Older Venetian portraits kept a polite distance from the sitter, and here a painter barely started on his career pulls the viewer close enough to meet the man's eye.