Titian illustrates Venus, the Ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty, as a young nude woman emerging from the sea, softly wringing her wavy, long, reddish-gold hair. Her nudity reveals her feminine curved figure and her white-rose skin. Her figure fills the canvas, and she is illustrated in three-quarter length, with the sea covering most of her legs, reaching up to the level of her thighs. She leans in a contrapposto pose, with her body turned to the left side of the canvas, while her head turns to the right, with her wet hair sweeping gracefully in front of her right arm, reaching the sea level. A small scallop shell floats on the water at the left side of the canvas. Both the sky and the sea have a bluish tone, separated by the blue-pink shades of the horizon.
There is a general agreement between the commenters on this painting that Titian was highly influenced by Pliny’s the Elder’s account of Venus Anadyomene, a work by the famous ancient Greek painter, Apelles (Humfrey 2007, p.107). By definition, ‘Anadyomene’ means ‘the one who emerges from the sea’. According to Greek mythology, Aphrodite was born in Paphos sea in Cyprus and was blown to the coast of the island on a scallop. Interestingly, the mythical background links with the historical context of this work, since, as art historian Peter Humfrey stresses, Cyprus was a colony of the Republic of Venice in the sixteenth century, and Titian lived and worked in Venice (Humfrey 2007, p.107). Venus was also an important symbolic figure for this city, the woman who was born from the waves acting as an allegorical parallel for the city that rose from the sea.
Some art historians have argued that this work was commissioned by Alfonso d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, one of the important patrons of Titian. However, art historian Harold Wethey argues that this is not the same canvas that Titian promised to the duke, since this commission, even if it had been designed, was apparently never finished (Wethey 1958, p.188).
The condition of this canvas remains good, although there is some damage on the areas of the face and hair (Brigstocke 1993, p.177). The features of Venus’s face were strengthened in the restoration process by Kennedy North in 1932. North also X-rayed the painting, a process which revealed that Venus’s head was originally turned to the left instead of the right side of the canvas. Taking this into account, the iconography would have recalled the marble relief sculpture by Antonio Lombardo (1448–c.1516) which it is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Brigkstocke 1993, p.177).
There is a striking chromatic harmony in the picture which conforms with the calm facial expression of the figure. The pastel blues and pinks are set off against the vibrant gold hair and the bright colour of Venus’s skin. As art historian Rona Goffen notes, the fact that the nude Venus turns her head away from the viewer is a traditional representation of the goddess (Goffen 1997, p.8). The existence of the scallop shell is a common attribute which accompanies Venus, in order to remind to the viewer of the unnatural birth of the Greek goddess.
Venus was one of the most common illustrations in Renaissance Italy. Indeed, Titian depicted the goddess nude in more than five different paintings including Venus and the Lute Player c.1565–70 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and The Venus of Urbino 1538 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence).
Further reading
- Harold Edwin Wethey, El Greco and his School, Princeton 1958, pp.71–2.
- Hugh Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 1993, pp.75-76.
- Rona Goffen (ed.), Titian’s Venus of Urbino, Cambridge 1997, pp. 8–9.
- Peter Humfrey, Titian, The Complete Paintings, Belgium 2007, p.107.
Stella Sofokleous
The University of Edinburgh
November 2016
