Titian, 'Man with a Glove', c.1520

 

In many ways this portrait seems conventional to the eye. The flattening, dark background, the three quarter length view, the wandering gaze of the sitter - all are common tropes in sixteenth century portraiture. Equally, the dress of the sitter is of the time, showing off his patrician status, his jewels but also his refined nature as his black jacket melts into the background. However, the mastery of Titian means that this piece quickly deviates from convention. Titian had already pioneered the use of the parapet in portraiture; Man with a Quilted Sleeve in London's National Gallery painted ten years prior to the piece above, is the prime example of a figure encroaching in on our space and twisting elegantly towards us. Here the unknown sitter leans on a similar device, allowing the painting to extend into our space so it is not such a flat design. The artist has used this device to also place his signature on the piece, and thus stamp his artistic authority. 

The origins of the sitter and the display of this piece are not known. It could originate from the Gonzaga collection in Mantua, but this has been disputed. It's size is moderate (100x89cm) and its display in a palace environment may be expected. Equally it could have been displayed in the Venetian portego a long, hall-like room where guests were entertained, made especially for the display of paintings along its walls. This display could account for the wandering gaze of the figure - perhaps he interacts with others on the walls. And his pointing finger could also be gesturing to another part of the room. 

With no display information, however, we can only assume that the finger either points to show off the ring and therefore his material richness, or points to the gloves, which form the centerpiece of this composition, foregrounded in the title. Titian has delicately rendered the ungloved hand - we see him entering his mature style here into the 1520s, as his genius emerges. These are not the hands of a man who has laboured all this life, but are elegant, graceful, perhaps even fragile. Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones write extensively on fetishising the glove, describing the paradox created by removing the glove: attention is given to the hands while making them useless, or rather only useful for putting on and removing the glove. In the sitter's other hand are both gloves, slashed across the back as a sign of fashionable nonchalance. However the leather does look rather ragged, and the removed glove is lifeless and drooping, whilst the fingers barely reach the ends of the leather. Though the sitter's face remains a picture of perfection, the gloves seem aged and ravaged by violence. The sitter's face seems a little unsure of himself, as if he is trying to retreat into the darkness of the background. He is not so world weary as the glove he has removed from his hands. There is almost a ghostly grey pallor to the glove that no longer holds a hand, empty of flesh and blood, discarded and no longer of use. The complexities of iconography in Titian's piece therefore lie in the materialism identified in the title; the glove itself.