若い女性の肖像

In the mid-1530s Titian was Venice's great portraitist, courted by dukes and princes for likenesses that flattered without quite lying. This young woman in a feathered hat comes from those years, around 1536. Nobody knows who she was, and it may not matter much, because the same model turns up about two years later reclining as the famous Venus of Urbino. X-rays of this canvas tell a small story of their own, that Titian first painted her bare-headed with pearls threaded through her hair, then thought again and gave her the tilted hat and the heavy green wrap she wears now. She looks straight out, unbothered, holding the gaze she was posed to hold.