“Sons of the Truth, Lovers of Virtue”: Painting the Patrician in Renaissance Venice

Abstract

Venetian patrician portraits of the late fifteenth century document deeply ingrained expectations of that class. Largely static and impassive, the subjects of independent portraits appear as slight variations on a theme, rather than as studies of individuals. In contrast, Titian's (Tiziano Vecellio, ca. 1488–1576) early portraits seem to represent a significant departure from tradition and reveal the artist's commitment to portraying personality, as well as physiognomy. In this article, I suggest that Titian's success was due in part to his knowledge of and sensitivity to the social constraints of late fifteenth-century Venetian culture. In turn, this allowed him to consciously accommodate traditional expectations of his patrician clientele while incrementally introducing the modern portrait.