Plate 7. Vendramin Family, Titian (1543-7), National Gallery, London. An afternoon may be spent perusing from face to face, imagining the workings of this Venetian family. Perhaps most striking is how Titian depicts the boys. It is as if Mum dressed them up in their Sunday best but could not get them to sit still. One wonders if Andrea Vendramin (center, in red), having no doubt spent a considerable sum, was annoyed to find his sons looking this way and that. Or was he struck, as we are five centuries later, by the intense intimacy of their boredom? Titian’s genius is not in the faithfulness of their likeness but in the immediacy of their emotion. Fair warning for Mum (and Dad) who would cull the family album to empty smiles and wooden postures.