This is the confidence trickster, a little-known miniature painter named Ann Jemima Provis. She claimed to have a copy of a recipe book which had been in her family for generations, giving recipes and explanations of the techniques of seventeenth century Venetian painters, including Titian. Royal Academicians began scrambling over each other in the rush to get access to Miss Provis and her 'secrets' in the belief that they too could learn how to paint like Titian. Miss Provis is daubing a grotesque portrait of Titian on the canvas in front of her. She wears a magnificent train, decorated with eyes from peacock feathers (emblems of vanity) but beneath this her skirt is tattered and worn.

Detail from: Titianus Redivivus; - or - The Seven-Wise-Men consulting the new Venetian Oracle, 1797. The British Museum

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