Portrait of Count Antonio Porcia and Brugnera, 1535 - 1540

“This portrait has been restored and digitalized in high definition thanks to the contribution of the Borsa Italiana through the London Stock Exchange Group Foundation”

This painting, signed on the window ledge, depicts the noble Antonio di Porcia of Friuli, born c. 1508. It belongs to Titian’s mature phase as a portrait artist, a phase in which he underscored his sitters’ social status (the knight’s collar, sword and black attire) rather than highlighting only their ideal aspects as he had done in his youth. The window opens out onto a landscape with a river and mountains, a compositional formula which he had also adopted in earlier portraits. The work had been transferred from the ancestral castle of the Porcia at Pordenone to the residence of Alfonso Porcia in Milan. It was then inherited by Eugenia Litta Visconti Arese, who donated it to Brera in 1891.