Portrait of Giulio Romano

Titian's Portrait of Giulio Romano from around 1537, recorded in the Gonzaga collection and now dispersed, documented the most important architect-painter working in northern Italy at that moment — the man who had transformed Mantua through the Palazzo del Te and the Palazzo Ducale renovations, and who was Raphael's most gifted pupil and the carrier of the central Italian tradition into the Po Valley. Giulio Romano's presence in Mantua made that court a meeting place of Venetian and Roman-Florentine artistic currents, and his work profoundly influenced the generation of Mannerist artists who were reshaping Italian painting in the 1530s. Titian's portrait documents a professional encounter between the dominant painter of Venice and the most celebrated architect-artist of mainland Italy, two men who represented different but equally important strands of the Italian Renaissance. The painting's documentary importance exceeds its physical survival: we know Giulio Romano's face primarily through this portrait and through the cameo appearance Raphael gave him in the School of Athens.

Titian renders his fellow artist with characteristic insight, using warm, natural light and a restrained composition that emphasizes Giulio Romano's intelligent, alert expression.