Retrato de Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo

Titian painted this around 1510, when he was barely into his twenties and just stepping out from under Giorgione's shadow in Venice. The whole picture is built to push one thing at you. The sitter rests his elbow on a parapet and his great quilted blue sleeve swells forward over it, spilling past the ledge and into your space, so the man feels physically present in a way portraits of that moment usually didn't. The National Gallery isn't sure who he is; the best guess is a young man of the Venetian Barbarigo family, Gerolamo, which is why the title still carries a question mark. Young Rembrandt studied a print of this pose and borrowed the arm on the ledge for his own self-portraits.