Retrato de Francisco I

Titian never laid eyes on the man in this portrait. In the late 1530s the French king Francis I was Venice's useful counterweight to the Habsburg emperor Charles V, and a flattering likeness was good diplomacy. But the king was in France and Titian in Venice, so the painter worked from a bronze medal struck by the goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, which showed Francis strictly in profile. That is why he faces sideways here, the one angle the medal offered, his beard and heavy gold chain built up from metal rather than flesh. The go-between was the writer Pietro Aretino, Titian's friend, who courted the king's favour with gifts. Titian portrayed Francis three times over the years, always from that same profile, never from the man.