Self-Portrait (Titian, Madrid)

Self-Portrait is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian painter Titian. Dating to about 1560, when Titian would have been over 70 years old, it is the later of his two surviving^[1] self-portraits. The painting is a realistic and unflattering depiction of the physical effects of old age, and as such shows none of the self-confidence of his earlier self-portrait (c. 1546–47) now in Berlin. That painting shows Titian in three-quarter view in an alert pose.^[2]

Titian looks remote, aged and gaunt, staring into the middle distance, seemingly lost in thought.^[3] Yet the portrait projects dignity, authority and the mark of a master painter.