Portrait of Ippolito de' Medici

Titian's Portrait of Ippolito de' Medici in Hungarian military costume, painted in 1532 and now in the Galleria Palatina, is one of the Renaissance's most eloquent statements about the gap between the life one is born to and the life one is forced to live. Ippolito was an illegitimate Medici, a young man of exceptional gifts and ambition who was maneuvered into a cardinalate against his will by Clement VII — the same pope who had sacked Rome in 1527 — to serve the family's political interests. His participation in Charles V's campaign against the Ottomans in Hungary, dressed in the exotic military costume that Titian depicts, was a way of claiming the martial identity that his clerical role denied him. He died in 1535, probably poisoned, at twenty-four. Titian's portrait captures something of the biographical tragedy: the extravagant Hungarian costume reads as both bravado and protest, the young cardinal in soldier's clothes declaring by his dress who he wanted to be.

Titian renders the young Medici cardinal in exotic Hungarian military dress with his mature painterly technique, using rich, dark tones and confident brushwork to capture the subject's restless, martial character.

This portrait from 1532 in the Palazzo Pitti has been conserved with attention to the elaborate Hungarian costume. The fur and textile details have been carefully maintained. The canvas has been relined. The painting's unusual iconography — a cardinal in military dress — has made it one of Titian's most discussed portraits.