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Updated: June 26, 2025
At the time when Titian began to adopt the manner of Giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait of a gentleman of the Barberigo family, who was his friend, and this was considered very beautiful, the coloring being true and natural, and the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted as might also the stitches in a satin doublet, painted in the same work; it was so well and carefully done, that it would have been taken for a picture by Giorgione, if Titian had not written his name on the dark ground.
Moreover, the "Violin Player," formerly in the Sciarra Palace, at once reminds us of the "Barberigo" portrait at Cobham, while the "Herodias with the Head of John Baptist," dated 1510, now in the collection of Mr. George Salting, shows conclusively how closely related were the two painters in the last year of Giorgione's life.
The portrait follows the Berlin "Young Man," and may well take its place among the portraits which, as we have seen, Giorgione must have painted during the last decade of the century prior to receiving his commission to paint the Doge. And in this connection it is of special interest to find the Doge was himself a Barberigo.
The left wing was commanded by the noble Venetian, Barberigo, whose vessels stretched along the Aetolian shore, which, to prevent his being turned by the enemy, he approached as near as, in his ignorance of the coast, he dared to venture.
The gallery, like all of the famous ones of Europe, is free to every one, either for simple study, or for copying. This is the collection which Napoleon I. said he would give a nation's ransom to possess. On the way to the Academy the guide points out the Barberigo Palace, in which Titian lived and died. The Doge's Palace is full of historic interest.
The conception is wholly Giorgionesque, but the hardness of contour and the comparative lack of quality in the touch betrays another and an inferior hand. Nevertheless the portrait is of great interest, for could we but imagine it as fine in execution as in conception we should have an original Giorgione portrait before us. The features are curiously like those of the Barberigo gentleman.
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