Ranuccio Farnese, Titiaan

Ranuccio Farnese, Titiaan

Ranuccio Farnese was twelve years old when Titian painted his portrait. The boy had been sent to Venice by his grandfather, Pope Paul III, to become prior of an important property belonging to the Knights of Malta. As a member of the powerful and aristocratic Farnese family, Ranuccio went on to an illustrious ecclesiastical career. He was made Archbishop of Naples at the age of fourteen, and he later served as Bishop of Bologna, Archbishop of Milan and Ravenna, and Cardinal Sant'Angelo, dying when he was only thirty–five years old.

Adult responsibility came to Ranuccio when still a child, as Titian so brilliantly conveyed through the cloak of office, too large and heavy, sliding off the youth's small shoulders. The boy in the role of the man is what gives this characterization such poignancy.

Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter during the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school.