Ritratto di Giulia Varano

When Titian painted this young woman in Venice in the mid-1540s, she was already a ruler in her own right. Giulia da Varano had inherited the small central-Italian duchy of Camerino as a child, and marriage to Guidobaldo della Rovere made her Duchess of Urbino as well. Her husband commissioned the portrait, and Titian gave her the trappings of that rank, heavy red velvet, gold, a steady outward gaze. She would not enjoy it long. Giulia died in 1547, around the time the picture was finished, aged just 23 and without an heir. What survives of her is largely this canvas, the settled face of a woman who governed territory before she was 20.