Renata gifts the colonel a portrait of herself that was painted two years before the novel takes place. At the time that the portrait was painted, Renata was just 17 years old. The colonel is well aware of her youth; he refers directly to the portrait as “jailbait,” acknowledging the illicit or dubious nature of the age gap in their relationship. On one level, the portrait therefore symbolizes the colonel’s conflicting feelings about the relationship, including guilt, remorse, and regret.

Renata has since grown into a 19-year-old woman, making the relationship somewhat more socially acceptable. However, the portrait is of a young girl, fixed in a moment in time. The subject will not grow old, which is especially captivating for a man who is confronting his own mortality. The portrait is thus a symbol of youth but also a painful reminder of aging. If the colonel acknowledges the difference that just two years make between the painted Renata and the actual Renata, then he—at roughly 50 years old—feels this contrast personally. Renata barely recognizes her younger self, while the colonel cannot help but recognize how his own younger self—in the form of traumatic war memories—intrudes on his present moment.

The portrait is not the only present that Renata tries to give to the colonel. She wants him to take her emeralds, but he repeatedly declines. He tries to explain this to Renata, but he does not cite any specific reason as to why he would accept one gift and refuse another. Instead, he presents the contrast and encourages her to come to her own understanding. The implication is that the emeralds represent raw wealth, a kind that the colonel does not feel comfortable taking from a young woman. By contrast, the portrait is a sentimental gift whose value lies in the subject matter and the recipient rather than the painting itself. He does not even want to keep the frame, preferring to keep only the portrait. Renata comes to understand the significance of this. As the scion of a wealthy family, she has a different relationship to money than the colonel, who comes from more humble origins. She accepts that the emeralds will be returned and the portrait will not; that she should accept this symbolizes the gradual way in which she is maturing as an adult, as well as her growing understanding of the man she loves.

The portrait is delivered to the Hotel Gritti and spends time in the colonel’s hotel room. There, he addresses the portrait as though it were Renata, but whereas he refers to Renata as “Daughter,” he refers to the portrait as “Portrait”. This suggests that the colonel feels that to address the painting is not to address Renata herself. This is even more evident in the subject matters that he is willing to discuss. He is frank and uninhibited when talking to the portrait, voicing thoughts and concerns that he later withholds from the actual Renata. The contrast between the conversations with the portrait and the conversations with Renata symbolizes the way in which the colonel seeks to preserve the innocence of his young lover while also trying to unburden himself—a tension that is never fully resolved.