The sitter in this portrait is depicted at three-quarter-length, facing half to the right, in a black coat. The fingers of his right hand are keeping the place in a volume, while his left hand holds a red fruit resting on a table. At the upper left is a statuette of Apollo on a high pedestal; to the right a mountain landscape is visible through the window. In style and technique the portrait matches Titian’s late work, but it is not quite of autograph quality. The artist is probably one of Titian’s later and most trusted assistants; perhaps the assistant responsible for pictures to which Titian’s signature is attached such as the ‘Stigmatization of St Francis’ (Ascoli Piceno). When executing the portrait he was probably acting independently, as the rather unimaginative composition is unlikely to have been Titian’s, although the lateral strip of landscape seen through the window had been repeated several times in Titian’s portraits since the ‘Antonio Porcia’ of the 1530s (Brera, Milan). The painting has been previously exhibited as ‘Titian’s Uncle’, a curiously specific title in light of the relative youth of the sitter. This title may depend upon some inscription (now lost) recording the relationship between the sitter and the artist; it is worth noting that one of Titian’s most trusted assistants in the late 1560s, Emanuel Amberger, had an uncle who was a bookbinder in Augsburg, and this may explain the prominence of the book.