Venus with a Mirror

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Venus with a Mirror: Titian

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Titian Oil Painting - Venus with a Mirror

Keywords: Venus, Mirror

Work Overview: Venus with a Mirror
Artist Titian
Year 1555
Medium oil on canvas
Dimensions 124 cm × 104 cm (49 in × 41 in)
Location National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Venus with a Mirror (about 1555) is a painting by Titian, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and it is considered to be one of the collection's highlights.

The pose of the Venus resembles the classical statues of the Venus de' Medici in Florence or the Capitoline Venus in Rome, which Titian may have seen when he wrote that was "learning from the marvelous ancient stones." The painting is said to celebrate the ideal beauty of the female form, or to be a critique of vanity, or perhaps both.[2] It was copied by several later artists, including Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck.[3]

Titian made a number of paintings of the same subject, but this is the believed to be the earliest and the only version to be entirely by the hand of Titian, without additions by his assistants. it remained in his house until his death in 1576.[3]

X-rays of the painting have revealed that Titian painted it over a double portrait which he had abandoned. Titian kept the red cloak of one of the figures in the abandoned painting and placed it under Venus's arm.[4] The use of the cloak from the earlier painting probably played a large part in the composition of the new painting.[3]

Titian is believed to have made another version of this Venus for the Venetian lawyer Niccolo Crasso, who also commissioned Titian to paint the Retable of Saint Nicholas de Bari at about the same time. A drawing of the other version was included by Anthony van Dyck in the sketchbook made during his trip to Italy. This other version is now lost, but a studio copy exists in the Hermitage Museum.[3]

Titian is thought to have made a second copy, which was sent to his regular patron King Philip II of Spain, in 1567. This version was also lost, but a copy of it by Peter Paul Rubens exists, which is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.

At the core of Renaissance art is the revival of the classical past, and in his Venus with a Mirror, Titian revealed both his appreciation of antiquity and his remarkable modernity. During a sojourn in Rome he wrote that he was "learning from the marvelous ancient stones" that were being unearthed daily in the city. Indeed, he based the gesture of the goddess, her hands held to her breast and lap, on a famous Roman statue of Venus that later belonged to the Medici.

Yet Titian breathed a warmth and life into the remote source to conjure a startlingly immediate and sensual modern Venus. Her pliant flesh seems to melt at the touch of the cupid who strains to bestow on her the crown of love. While she pulls about her a wine–colored velvet wrap lined in fur, soft, opulent, and evoking the sense of touch, Venus reveals her body as much as she conceals it. The beautiful woman gazing at her reflection is a favorite theme of Renaissance love poetry in which the writer envies the fortunate mirror that enjoys his lady's splendid image.

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