This is an adapted copy of Titian’s painting of c.1514, then as now in the Borghese collection. Castiglione’s unease at drawing the nude highlights the inadequacies of his training. He also seems to misunderstand the contemporary debate about the relative merits of disegno (‘design’ or ‘drawing’) and colore – he took Titian’s colore to mean merely ‘colourful’, and transcribed the Venetian’s elegant modulation and saturation with almost random scribbles of colour.