The photograph shows the painting and its frame. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, stands facing the viewer, his right hand resting on the hilt of a dagger at his waist, his left upon the collar of a large hound which stands beside him.
Described by Cook & Wedderburn (XXI.27 n. 5) as a 'photograph of the full-length, standing portrait, ... in the Madrid Gallery' (i.e. the Prado), this is the portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V which Titian probably painted during the Emperor's visit to Italy in 1532-1533; it may have been copied from a very similar painting by Jacob Seisenegger.
The photograph was first listed in the Teaching Collection in 1870, when it was included in the "Catalogue of Examples" as no. 48 in the Reference Series, a position it retained in the 1872 catalogue of the series. The photograph formed part of a sequence of pictures by painters - all portrait-painters - who applied paint broadly, using the edges of the painted areas to denote outlines, rather than drawing them in with the point of the brush (Catalogue of Examples, p. 19).
Presented by John Ruskin to the Ruskin Drawing School (University of Oxford), 1875; transferred from the Ruskin Drawing School to the Ashmolean Museum, c.1949.
Ruskin, John, Catalogue of Examples Arranged for Elementary Study in the University Galleries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1870), cat. Standard no. 48
Ruskin, John, Catalogue of the Reference Series Including Temporarily the First Section of the Standard Series (London: Smith, Elder, [1872]), cat. Standard no. 48
Ruskin, John, ‘The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford: Catalogues, Notes and Instructions’, Edward T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, eds, The Works of John Ruskin: Library Edition, 39 (London: George Allen, 1903-1912), 21, cat. Standard no. 48