The portrait, based on the death mask of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, was commissioned by Pietro Aretino to Titian, but it wasn't painted. The commission then passed to the painter Gian Paolo Pace, said "l'Olmo", who painted the portrait between October and November 1545. Then Pietro Aretino donated it to the Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, Giovanni's son. The painting is remembered in Florence for the first time in 1559: in the Ricordanze by Giorgio Vasari, the artist remembers having copied it as fresco in the "Sala di Giovanni delle Bande Nere" in Palazzo Vecchio (painted between 1556 and 1559). In 1560 is described for the first time in the inventory of the "Guardaroba" of the Medicis, where it is attributed to Titian. The attribution persisted in all the inventories and subsequent studies, until 1905, with the studies of Georg Gronau before and then of Ettore Camesasca, who put together Pace's activities.

The painting was used for many copies: among many others, in addition to those already mentioned by Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio, you can remember the double portrait with his wife Maria Salviati (copy after Giovanni Battista Naldini, with variation on Giovanni's figure, inv. 1890 No. 5534), a copy of the seventeenth century (inv., 1890, No. 5360). Cat. No. 00129465