TIZIANO Vecellio
(b. 1490, Pieve di Cadore, d. 1576, Venezia)

Doge Andrea Gritti

1537-40
Oil on canvas, 84 x 66 cm
Private collection

This is a workshop copy of the official portrait Titian painted for the Hall of Greater Council in the Palazzo Ducale in c. 1537. All paintings in the Hall were destroyed in 1577 in the second terrible fire of the decade. This official image is much tamer than the later portrait of c. 1545 - painted some seven years after the death of Gritti - which was conceived along much less formal lines, consequently conveying a sense of the larger-than-life personality of the most effective Venetian doge of the sixteenth century.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.