[10] The "broad spiral motion in depth of the head and arm" suggests that Titian had some awareness of contemporary developments in painting in Florence.

According to John Steer, Titian retains the "mood of generalized inner mystery" that Giorgione had brought to his portraits (which may not represent individuals who commissioned the painting) but shows the personality and "physical assurance" of his sitter with new force and realism.

They are usually taken as Titian's initials (his name was "Tiziano Vecellio"), though there is a second V visible in infrared reflectography, so the painting once might have carried "the mysterious abbreviation "VV"".

"[27] Nonetheless, this theory was supported by the National Gallery in the title they used in 2017; Gerolamo Barberigo, who became thirty in 1509 at the time the portrait was painted, has been chosen as the most likely member of the family to be represented.

Thirty was the age at which patrician Venetian men became qualified for significant political roles, and perhaps a good moment to commission a portrait.

[33] The work, or possibly a copy of it, was part of the collection of Alfonso Lopez, an art dealer in Amsterdam in 1639, where Rembrandt would have seen it, and it was engraved, with an inscribed identification as Ariosto.

Still identified as Ariosto, it was apparently sold in Paris in December 1641, and a letter survives written to a friend to advise Anthony van Dyck it was up for sale, and praising it.

After some negotiation, the National Gallery acquired it from Donaldson for £30,000, the price he had paid for it, with contributions from Lord Iveagh, Waldorf Astor, John Pierpont Morgan, Alfred Beit, the government, and others.

[37] The sale marked something of a turning-point, after two decades or more when outstanding works from aristocratic British collections had been allowed to cross the Atlantic, though there was a precedent in 1890, with a government grant of £25,000 for a group bought from the Earl of Radnor, including Holbein's The Ambassadors.

Similar arrangements would bring Holbein's Portrait of Christina of Denmark (1909, £72,000) and Jan Gossaert's Adoration of the Kings (1911, £40,000) to the National Gallery.