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This is almost certainly a portrait of the Venetian sculptor Tiziano Aspetti, one of the leading sculptors in Venice at the end of the sixteenth century. In 1590 Aspetti and Girolamo Campagna were commissioned to carve colossal figures to flank the entrance to the Public Mint. The statuette here is probably the wax model for Aspetti's Hercules, and the portrait may mark the completion of the work. The likeness can be compared to the later bust made for Aspetti's tomb in the Carmine, Pisa, by his pupil, Felice Palma.
Aspetti probably trained in the family workshop in Padua and may have been the assistant of the slightly older Girolamo Campagna. In 1577 he entered the service of Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, who had the most important collection of antique sculpture outside Rome. For sixteen years Aspetti had a workshop at the Grimani Palace in Venice and was responsible for restoring some of the marbles, offered to the Venetian Republic in 1589 and arranged in the Statuario Pubblico, Biblioteca Marciana, in 1596. On 3 November 1590 Aspetti and Campagna each agreed to carve a colossal marble figure to flank the entrance to the Public Mint (Zecca), directly opposite the Doge's Palace in Venice, as part of Vincenzo Scamozzi's extension and modification of Sansovino's buildings.
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