Vincenzo Cappello

Titian and Workshop

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the thighs up, an older, balding man with a long white beard stands wearing a full suit of armor draped in a burgundy-red cloak in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s body is angled to our right, but he looks at us from the corners of his dark eyes. He has bushy gray brows, a bumped nose, high cheekbones, and his lips are closed. He has short white hair around a receding hairline, and his beard falls to his chest. His pewter-gray armor gleams darkly with cream-white accents. With one hand, he braces a baton against his right hip, to our left, and with the other gathers the folds of his cloak down by that side. The cloak is tied over one shoulder and falls heavily around his body. His helmet rests on a shoulder-high gray stone structure, perhaps a mantle or a ledge, behind the man to our right. The rest of the background is charcoal gray.