# Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [TIZIANO Vecellio]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on panel, 125 x 94 cm ## Commentary Titian's most important patron in the 1530s was Federico Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and nephew of Alfonso d'Este. The artist's portrait of Federico is of unsurpassed poise and elegance and may have been intended to support the sitter's matrimonial intentions. The flattery is not unalloyed. The Duke's love of pleasure, indicated by his sumptuous costume and the pampered dog, may be subsumed by his seigneurial dignity but the slight inclination of his head and the small sensuous mouth evoke the flippant selfishness of the same Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto. The way the dog recognizes its master would have been seen as a conventional tribute to the power of portraiture to achieve a vivid likeness. ## Related artworks - [A Knight of Malta]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Allegory of Time Governed by Prudence]() - [Angel of the Annunciation]() - [Annunciation]() - [Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle \(detail\)]() - [Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle]() - [Assumption of the Virgin \(detail\)]() - [Assumption of the Virgin \(detail\)]() - [Assumption of the Virgin \(detail\)]() - [Assumption of the Virgin \(detail\)]() - [Assumption of the Virgin]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()