Best Faces Forward

From the classical masters of Greece and Rome to the Andy Warhols and Lucian Freuds of our age, artists have always sculpted and painted the people who mattered — and some who didn't. Today in Paris, two major exhibitions celebrate portraiture from two important eras: the High Renaissance of the 16th century, and the period from the late 18th to the early 19th century that ranged from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Both shows feature rarely displayed works from around the world. Both demonstrate, in the same way today's celebrity journalism does, that people are endlessly fascinating.

That fascination is featured in force at Titian: Face to Face with Power, which runs at the Musée du Luxembourg until Jan. 21. A well-established artist to the rich and famous by his 20s, Titian was successful all his life and has never gone out of fashion. He could paint just about anything, from conversion-inducing altarpieces to sensuous nudes, but he is best known for intimate portraits with brilliantly rendered personal details — an ostrich feather, a signet ring, a filigreed sword. His subjects were Kings, Pontiffs, commanders and aristocrats seeking immortality at a time of religious wars and social change — when Columbus had recently landed in America and Copernicus declared the sun to be the center of the cosmos.

A master of light (on the face or glinting off a breastplate) and dark (in the background or in the folds of a cloak), Titian could produce almost impressionist effects. Though enormously productive, he was able to bring a psychological dimension to each of his subjects: the innocence of a 2-year-old child (Clarice Strozzi, dressed in white silks and pearls holding her dog); the dignity of a chevalier ( Francesco Maria della Rovere, who was so busy commanding the army that he sent his armor ahead so the artist could begin without him); and the sensitivity of an artist ( Portrait of a Musician, with his back toward the painter).