Titian, 'Portrait of Girolamo Fracastoro', about 1528

Girolamo Fracastoro (1476/8–1553), a celebrated medical doctor, as well as an astronomer, mathematician and poet, proposed the theory of contagion and in 1530 wrote an epic poem that gave the name ’syphilis‘ to the virulent, sexually transmitted disease that was ravaging Italy in that period. His most important medical book De Contagione (On Contagion), which explains how and why plague was spread, was published in 1546. Vasari recorded in the 1568 edition of his Lives of the Artists that Titian had painted a portrait of Fracastoro.

Before it was conserved the painting was in poor condition and obscured by thick dirty varnish, and its attribution to Titian was doubted. However, recent conservation treatment has revealed the technical brilliance with which the paint was handled in the best-preserved parts of the portrait. Although most of the modelling of the black parts of the coat has been lost, Titian’s touch seems particularly apparent in the lynx fur collar. The massive collar is an accurate yet painterly depiction of the winter coat of the European lynx, with its long white belly fur flecked with black and its shorter light brown back fur more distinctly spotted. Although the paint surface of the portrait is damaged in many areas, the thick broken brushstrokes down the brightly lit left edge of the fur remain remarkably fresh, as do the fine lines scratched into the white paint of the fur tufts trapped in the seams of the sleeve. The angle of the fur band on the sitter’s other arm indicates that it was originally bent so that his hand was on his hip.

The format, with the canvas only a little taller than it is wide, is typical of Titian’s early portraiture. The sitter’s dynamic pose, turning to look at us over his shoulder with his arm resting on a parapet, is reminiscent of Titian’s Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo of about 1510. Common to both portraits is Titian’s representation of the figure as a solid triangular form in the middle of the canvas, with the sitter’s right eye the focus of the central vertical axis. The composition of the Portrait of Girolamo Fracastoro also relates to Titian’s Portrait of Gian Paolo da Ponte of 1534 (Scarpa Collection, Venice), especially in the treatment of the lynx fur.

However, several mysteries about the painting remain, not least the architecture in the background, which is much damaged. An oculus window or roundel similar to that painted out in the background of Portrait of a Lady (’La Schiavona'), appears in the top left. It balances the gloved hand diagonally opposite. Another dark shape in the upper right corner above the door or niche is difficult to identify.

The slightly generalised quality of the face is also puzzling, although this may be partly due to damage. But as Fracastoro was such a busy man Titian may have had to work from the briefest of sittings, or even from another image. Perhaps the doctor left his lynx-lined coat with the artist, allowing the magnificence of this item, popular among rich Venetians and a favourite of Titian’s, to take centre stage.