Ritratto di papa Paolo III

Titian met the pope in Ferrara in the spring of 1543, and painted him there while Europe's Catholic leaders were arguing over how to answer the Protestant reformers. Within two years those arguments would open as the Council of Trent. Paul III was in his mid-seventies, the head of the Farnese family, and Titian gives him none of the flattery a pope might expect. The eyes are wary, the shoulders stooped, the hand on the chair arm looks ready to grip. Get close and you can see how loosely it is painted, the beard and the red velvet built from quick, open strokes rather than smooth finish, which is Titian's late manner. He returned to the same sitter two years later for the famous group portrait with the Farnese grandsons, left unfinished, where that same distrust turns into open family tension.