EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Titian's Portrait of Ippolito de' Medici is not as simple as it looks. The elements are few though the eye is clearly drawn after the face to the bottom edge where his hand holds the sword. Swords often symbolize paintbrushes and he holds the shaft of this one as though its grip were phallic, positioned where his phallus should be on the inside.{ref1} It is a fertility symbol of Titian's craft (hand), with its phallic "tip" directly under Ippolito's eye linking it with vision too. The phallus' presence on the outside of his clothes is also a sign that, like most poetic images, the scene is inside out. It looks like exterior nature but is inside Titian's head.

We know that Titian morphed his initials (TV) into an object in Christ Flagellated as Raphael often did with an R.{ref2} Indeed an artist's hidden initial is so common that they are always worth looking for.

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Here a chain hangs from the sword to form the stem of a T with a curved top (see diagram below). To its right, the sword's crossguard touches the frame's edge as does the chain. We can only imagine then that the two converging lines meet in a V outside the image, thereby bridging two realities like the artist, that of the picture and studio.

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Now note how Ippolito's other arm is extended like a painter's; although looking stiff and formal, he is posed like an artist looking into a mirror while working on an unseen canvas at its edge. The entire image is "a mirror". He is a self-representation, posed like Titian painting it but dressed in Hungarian costume like a model. As I so often show on EPPH, artist and model are subject and object united, one and the same. I won't show it this time but he even has the facial features of a young Titian too.