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"The Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, in Armor with a Page is one of Titian's greatest and most influential portraits," says Scott Schaefer, curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. This newly acquired work is among the Museum's most important acquisitions and joins a significant group of Italian Renaissance portraits that includes Jacopo Pontormo's Portrait of a Halberdier and Sebastiano del Piombo's Pope Clement VII, all three painted at nearly the same time.
One of the most esteemed artists and sought-after portraitists of the Italian Renaissance, Titian is credited with the invention of the standing state portrait, and the Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos signals the inception of this prototype. The painting depicts an important military leader whose interest in art and literature was well known and who may have even known Titian as a friend. Alfonso d'Avalos, born into an illustrious Spanish-Neapolitan family, trained for a military career under his cousin, Ferdinando Francesco, the Marchese di Pescara. After winning numerous military campaigns, Avalos was honored with the Order of the Golden Fleece. He is shown wearing the Order's royal collar over an elaborate and beautifully wrought suit of armor befitting an imperial leader. In the lower left, a page, whose diminutive size reinforces Avalos's power and position, hands him a helmet. Titian endowed Avalos with all the earnestness of a learned and contemplative man, while at the same time conveying his tremendous power as governor of Milan and commander general of imperial forces in Italy under the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
Avalos and his wife, Maria of Aragon, niece of King Ferdinand of Naples, maintained a sumptuous court that patronized artists and writers. Their art collection included paintings by Andrea del Sarto, Michelangelo, and Pontormo, as well as Titian. Although one of the most cultivated nobles of his age, Avalos had a reputation for being arrogant, greedy, and cruel. His Milanese court reflected his avaricious nature; it was so rife with the sale of offices and financial irregularities that the emperor recalled him in 1546 to Madrid, where, after official investigations into the abuses of his regime, he soon died.
"With the addition of Titian's Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos, the Museum's visitors will be able to trace the development of the state portrait, both imperial and ecclesiastical," says Scott Schaefer, Curator of Paintings and Acting Curator of Sculpture and Works of Art. "Titian's portrait heralds such remarkable later paintings as Anthony van Dyck's Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini, Domenico Fetti's Portrait of a Man with a Sheet of Music, and Guercino's Pope Gregory XV." Titian dominated Venetian painting during the years of its greatest achievement and, along with Raphael, set the standard for court portraiture during the subsequent development of Western painting. His enduring influence can be traced through successive centuries to works in the Getty collection by Jacques-Louis David, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne. Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos is on view in the Museum's North Pavilion.
Press Release
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