Titian, Portrait of Jacopo Sannazaro (c.1514-1518)

The sitter may be the poet Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530). What is evident is that Titian has put poetry at the heart of this dreamy, moody portrait. The small volume, with a fashionable Italian humanist binding and held open by the sitter’s finger, was the calling card of poetry. It also functions as a marker of status – another way in which the printing press transformed the social role of books and reading in this period.

Credit: Oren Margolis (July 2018)