Ranuccio Farnese

Ranuccio Farnese was eleven years old when Titian began his portrait, yet the youth already carried the responsibilities of one of the greatest dynasties of Italy, a grandson of Pope Paul III and holder of church benefices from childhood. Painted in 1541 and 1542, the half-length portrait shows the future cardinal with the grave, prematurely adult confidence that appealed to the Farnese, and it displays the rich, warm handling and the penetrating humanity with which Titian had become the leading portrait painter of Europe. It is one of the treasures of the Samuel H. Kress Collection.