Bravo

Titian raises the close-up, half-length picture full of action as painted by his teacher Giorgione to a level of tense drama. The three-quarter length portrait of the protagonist wreathed with laurels contrasts with the shadowy profile of the daggerdrawing “bravo” (Italian: “henchman contracted by a lord”). The scene has not yet been satisfactorily interpreted: perhaps it shows the attack on Trebonius by Gaius Lusius in which Trebonius pulls his sword to kill the assailant – or alternately the capture of Bacchus by Pentheus’s followers.