Portrait of Giulio Romano

The Portrait of Giulio Romano is an oil painting on canvas (101x86 cm) by Titian, dating from about 1536-1538 and kept in the Civic Museum of Palazzo Te in Mantua.

The painting portrays the painter Giulio Romano at the time when he was in Mantua, at the court of the Gonzaga. In his hands the design of an architecture, perhaps the Palatine Basilica of Santa Barbara, built in Mantua by Giovan Battista Bertani starting from 1562.

The masterpiece came to the Gonzaga from Giulio Romano's son, Raphael, after the death of his father, which took place in Mantua on November 1, 1546. It became the property of King Charles I of England, when probably the Mantuan family sold part of its collections. The canvas passed into the ownership of the English lord George Kinnaird, lord of Kinnaird, in the first half of the nineteenth century.