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By the late 1530s Alfonso d'Avalos governed Milan for Emperor Charles V and commanded the imperial army in Italy, and in 1539 he came to Venice and asked Titian for this. It looks like a portrait of a general in gleaming armor, but it actually records a specific moment a few years earlier, when d'Avalos calmed a mutiny among his troops in Lombardy by the sheer force of his speaking. Titian staged it like a Roman commander addressing his men, d'Avalos raising his right arm from a low platform exactly as ancient orators were shown on Roman monuments. The picture went first to the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua, then to Charles I of England. After that king was executed his collection was sold off, and Philip IV of Spain bought this, which is how it reached the Prado.