during the National Gallery in London
and we're looking at a painting by
Titian from about 15 10 to 15 20 which
is titled very descriptively portrait of
a man and this is sometimes referred to
as portrait of a man with a quilted
sleeve or a portrait of a man with a
blue sleeve all sorts of things but
nowhere does it give a name for who the
sitter is and when you look at this you
can see why there's different titles to
come along because the largest area of
the painting which is almost at ease of
jumping out of you is that sleeve the
sleeve is really in your face and he's
even shoving it in your face because you
see the man is posed with his elbow
sticking out towards us and he's
actually breaking the frame in a way
because there's this little ledge that
his right arm is resting on and the
sleeve overflows that ledge if it can't
be contained if you think about so this
is 15 10 to 20 s there were smack in the
middle of the Renaissance and we're in
Italy and Titian is painting in Venice
and what you see here is a man who
doesn't necessarily have obvious
trappings that tell you who he is but he
certainly has things that obviously tell
you his position in society and that
sleeve really does that it's very
expensive looking material definitely
the quality of the material you can see
that the skill he has with the
brushstrokes that you you really cannot
see his brushstrokes on the picture but
your totals have drawn into the
realistic quality in the shine of that
silky kind of padded quilted sleeve and
also you see it again on the black clip
that's draping around the side it also
has that again shimmering light quality
to it and you have the bright white bit
of his shirt that's underneath and you
see all of the little folds and creases
in the shirt and this tiny little thin
gold chain that disappears I mean you're
certainly getting status symbols and
it's extremely crisp the focus on them
that again on that white bit around his
neck and the chain which contrasts quite
strongly with the sort of Smokies
Fermata way he's treated his hair and
his beard which seems to almost blend
into that background
and the face really pops back out on you
that the hair and the beard kind of act
as a frame in a way for the face where
they blend into the background and we
don't really know where this is but that
allows the man's face to pop out and
he's not quite turned in profile he's
sort of 3/4 turned so you do get a view
of most of his face and his eye one is
extremely crisp and focused and looking
right out at you and the other one is
sort of blending back in that shadow on
the other side of his face which again
adds to that three dimensionality that
realism that contrasts to focus and
smokey hues in the background already
helped him bring this out and make it a
lot more alive and of course that was
something that was really important to
the Italian Renaissance ideals in
general was the idea of focusing on the
little details that would allow you to
depict a person the way he actually
looked this idea of the importance of
the human and ideas about humanism and
focusing on life on Earth and the life
of the mind not just about achieving
some heavenly reward later on so this is
not really a religious painting it's
just a painting of a man but it's quite
sort of psychological in a way because
we're getting his wealth from the sleeve
but in the background we don't know
where he is we don't know where his
setting is there's nothing in the
background in that great wall that he's
standing against that showing us
anything about his power in his display
but so we're drawn in by the sleeve but
also by his eye to his psychology just
and the way he's posed so the way he's
holding himself gives us an idea which
have status and how he feels about
himself this is a painting that really
does come alive when you look at it in
person to me because his face is much
more engaging than seeing reproductions
of this image there is a sense of
psychology and it looks like he has
thoughts about what he's looking at and
what he's looking at his us I mean he
looks out pretty directly at the viewer
his face sort of shifts for me sometimes
he looks inviting like it's got a smile
on his face and other times I can look
at him and I see that kind of shadow
coming out of the corner of his nose as
a bit of his sneer and a condescending
look at me
I think either way you do get this
feeling that he's forming some sort of
judgment about the viewer that he's
looking at I mean whether that's a
positive one or a negative one is a
little bit up in the air but down in
them itself the fact that you don't know
when he's thinking makes you want to
look and think about it all the more