Retábulo Gozzi

At the base of this altarpiece Titian did something he had not done before. He painted a small cartouche with the date, 1520, and his own name beside that of the man who paid for it, a Dalmatian merchant named Luigi Gozzi who traded out of Ancona. It is the earliest picture Titian both signed and dated, made while he was still building his reputation in Venice and taking commissions down the Adriatic coast. Gozzi had it placed on the high altar of the church of San Francesco ad Alto. Titian gives the Virgin and Child a sky of moving cloud and sets Saint Francis and the kneeling merchant into a composition that already tilts and turns rather than sitting still.