The great Portrait of Pope Paul III with his Nephews Alessandro and Ottavio Farnese is the most important of all the paintings made for the Farnese family, and one of the greatest portrait masterpieces of all time. In this painting Titian adopted a particular technique, leaving some details almost unfinished to accentuate the atmosphere of intrigue and ceremony. In a harmony of reds that is both lavish and suffocating, this great canvas demonstrates the impression that Titian got from his stay in Rome. The psychological triangulation between the pontiff, apparently decrepit and fragile but with the eyes of an old fox, the young Cardinal Alessandro who's nonchalantly leaning on his uncle's chair, and his grinning grandson Ottavio is truly worthy of a Shakespearian tragedy. Not only that, Ottavio's pose is a parody of one of the most famous statues of Classicism, the Discobolus, and this says a lot about the casual attitude with which Titian approached the classical models!
