THE commission must have been challenging, even for a master of Titian's calibre. Someone, possibly Philip II of Spain or Venetian sculptor Danese Cattaneo, had asked the Italian artist to paint a portrait of Hürrem (or Roxelana, as she was known in Europe), wife of the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman I. Titian had never set foot in Istanbul, but that wasn't in itself an issue-he had painted, based only on a medal or a small effigy, several portraits of Suleiman, including one for the Duke of Mantua that the city's ambassador, Benedetto Agnello, called 'so similar ...that it seems the very Turk alive'. Much trickier was the fact that few people knew what the secluded Hürrem really looked like. Nonetheless, Titian and his workshop, perhaps aided by their imaginations, managed to paint at least one portrait (which used to hang at Danese's house, according to artist Giorgio Vasari) and possibly more: the woman in Turkish attire at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, US, could be Hürrem (some critics believe her to be a generic Queen of Persia), as could be the one at Florence's Galleria degli Uffizi (traditionally identified as Cypriot queen Caterina Cornaro).
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
