Late 18th century, early 19th century
Venus of Urbino
Oil on canvas, 117 x 158 cm
The canvas depicts a young nude woman lying on a bed covered by a white sheet, her torso raised and supported by soft white pillows. The figure turns her head towards the viewer with a direct and composed gaze, while her left hand modestly covers her pubic area - a gesture that refers to the classical type of the Venus pudica - and her right hand slowly lets slip some red roses, a flower always sacred to the goddess. At her feet, curled up on the bed, sleeps a small dog rendered with affectionate realism. In the background, a green curtain drawn aside reveals a Renaissance interior: two maids rummage in a chest, one kneeling among the fabrics, the other, dressed in red with an elegant hairstyle, holds a rich dress on her shoulder. This copy, made between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, reproduces with remarkable fidelity the famous original by Titian Vecellio.
The Venus of Urbino was commissioned by Guidobaldo II della Rovere, scion of the Duchy of Urbino, who in March 1538 insisted on his agent in Venice to obtain a "nude woman" by Titian. The work was intended for his very young wife Giulia da Varano, married in 1534 for political reasons: the painting was to serve as an educational model, persuading her to the joys of marriage in an allegorical and culturally refined way. Titian represented the goddess by downplaying mythological references in favor of a modern and recognizable domestic setting, transforming the divinity into a living and present woman, capable of directly meeting the gaze of the beholder.
The Venus soon gained wide fame, multiplying requests for replicas and variations from both Titian and other Venetian painters. In 1631 Vittoria della Rovere, the last descendant of the dynasty, married Ferdinando II de' Medici, bringing to Florence an invaluable collection of works, including the famous canvas, which has been preserved at the Uffizi ever since. In the following centuries, the painting became a mandatory stop for every cultured traveler and was cited in countless guides. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres made a copy in 1821, now at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore; even Giuseppe Verdi owned a reproduction in his studio at Villa Sant'Agata. The Venus of Urbino follows in the tradition of Giorgione's Venus of Dresden, of which it represents a more explicit and provocative version: there the goddess slept, unaware of the gaze of others; here, however, she seeks and welcomes it. It was precisely this sense of conscious presence that served as a model for generations of artists: Francisco Goya with the Maja Desnuda, Ingres with the Grande Odalisque, and finally Édouard Manet, who copied the painting in 1856 and precisely reproduced its setting for his 1865 Olympia, a scandalous work that transposed the Renaissance theme into Parisian modernity, ideally closing a circle of three centuries.
