[1] Its subject is shown in front of a green curtain, wearing a cardinal's robes and holding gloves in his right hand (an accessory more usual in portraits of gentlemen and noblemen than of clerics).

[1] Titian was then summoned to the papal court in Rome, where he probably received and fulfilled the commission for a portrait of Alessandro, who had in 1534 been made cardinal of Sant'Angelo in Foro Piscium, aged only fourteen, by Pope Paul III.

[1] On the work's reverse is a grey wax seal showing the Farnese family lily, the original inventory number "66" and the inscription "C.S.ANGLO", referring to the titulus the subject was granted on being made a cardinal.

Venuti found the portrait in Rome in 1800 awaiting shipment to France and reclaimed it, though on its return to Naples it was hung not at Capodimonte but the palazzo di Francavilla.

[3] This meant that it stayed in Naples for the ten years of French rule from 1805 onwards, unlike the other Titians from his collection which Ferdinand took with him on fleeing to Palermo.