Venus with an Organist and Cupid (Venus and Musician or Venus with an Organist and a Dog)

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Venus with an Organist and Cupid (Venus and Musician or Venus with an Organist and a Dog): Titian

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Titian Oil Painting - Venus with an Organist and Cupid (Venus and Musician or Venus with an Organist and a Dog)

Keywords: Venus, Organist, Cupid, Venus, Musician, Venus, Organist, Dog

Work Overview: Venus with an Organist and Cupid (Venus and Musician; Venus with an Organist and a Dog)
TITIAN
1548
Oil on canvas, 148 x 217 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Titian painted five images of Venus and music, but those five variations on a single theme were not made for the same client, nor intended to be exhibited together. Set in a villa, they show Venus reclining before a large window. At her feet, an organist (in the versions at the Museo del Prado and the Staatliche Museen in Berlin) or a lutenist (at the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge) play their instrument as they contemplate the goddess’s nudity. Meanwhile, she looks away, distracted by the presence of a dog, or of Cupid. These works’ typology indicates they date from the final stage in the development of one of Titian’s subgenres: the reclining female nude, which began with his Sleeping Venus (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie) and continued with the Venus of Urbino (Florince, Galleria degli Uffizi). He thus returned to the subject of musicians with nude women in an open space that he had first addressed at the beginning of his career in his Pastoral Concert (Musée du Louvre).

The paintings of Venus and music have been the object of diverse interpretations. Some historians consider them manifestly erotic works with no deeper meaning. Others assign them considerable symbolic content, interpreting them as allegories of the senses from a neo-Platonic perspective that considers sight and hearing the means of knowing beauty and harmony, as defined by Mario Equicola in his Libro di natura d’amore (Venice, 1526). It is not enough, however, to assign the same meaning to all versions without considering the commercial logic and particular circumstances underlying each one. The first version would be one of the two at the Museo del Prado (P420), which is the only one in which the faces of both figures are individualized. In the others, Venus has stereotyped features of the sort visible in other female figures by Titian. In that first version, she wears a wedding ring on her right hand and lacks iconographic elements that would identify her as Venus. Moreover, this is the only version in which she is not accompanied by Cupid. The figures in the garden are exceptional in Titian’s work and are probably a metaphor for a successful marriage. Here, their meaning would be related to such a bond: the dog would allude to happiness, the donkey to eternal love, and the peacock to fecundity.

Titian based Venus and the Organ Player with Cupid on the previous version, transferring the silhouettes of both the main figures and the surrounding elements -the organ, curtain, trees, fountain, animals and the couple walking in the garden- but making small changes that depersonalize the original composition and endow it with greater commercial projection. The most important change was the presence of Cupid in place of the dog. This identifies the woman as Venus, which obliged the artist to modify the upper part of her body and the position of her head and left hand. The other changes were less significant, and involved the musician’s face, the landscape, and the placement of the folds in the curtain and in the velvet blanket on which Venus lies.

Venus and the Organ Player with Cupid was first mentioned in writing in 1626, when Cassiano del Pozzo saw it in the Lower summer quarters at Madrid’s Alcázar Palace. It entered the Museo del Prado in 1838 via the Royal Collection (Text drawn from Falomir, M. in: El Prado en el Ermitage, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2011, pp. 76-77).

The great Venetian master created several paintings depicting the nude Venus in the company of male musicians. Each of these works has multiple allegorical meanings. In this picture the connection between music and love can be sensed even more directly than in earlier astrological illustrations. Painters have characterized the children of Venus (that is, those who were born under the sign of Taurus the Bull or Libra the Scales) with scenes of love-making and other earthly pleasures: games, feasts, bathing, dancing, excursions, and especially music-playing. From the complex astrological series of the sixteenth century developed the picture type "Venus with Musician", then the amorous scenes and pastoral concerts which remained fashionable for another two hundred years.

In Titian's painting the contact between the enamoured youth and the goddess reveals something else, too. The canvas is dominated by the reclining nude figure on the couch casually leaning on her elbow and personifying beauty with her full body and the vibrant liveliness of her skin. The organ-player has his back toward her, but he openly turns his head while playing and derives inspiration from the sight of such beauty. This is a clear presentation of the inspiration theme in which Venus fulfills the role of the Muse. Her demeanour is ceremonial and passive; she pays no attention to the musician while he - and this is similar in each variant - makes great effort to make eye contact. It appears as if he pays reverence to such physical beauty by playing his music.

In addition, this painting can be considered the representation of Sight and Hearing. The active role of the glance and the importance of vision refer to the first sense, while the music-playing to the second. We can also assume that the stag running across the background became part of this picture in connection with Hearing, while the well, decorated with the figure of a faun holding an urn, is the well-spring of love.

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The Venetian Renaissance painter Titian and his workshop produced many versions of Venus and Musician, which may be known by various other titles specifying the elements, such as Venus with an Organist, Venus with a Lute-player, and so on.[1] Most versions have a man playing a small organ on the left, but in others a lute is being played. Venus has a small companion on her pillows, sometimes a Cupid and in other versions a dog, or in Berlin both.[2] The paintings are thought to date from the late 1540s onwards.

Many of Titian's paintings exist in several versions, especially his nude mythological subjects. Later versions tend to be mostly or entirely by his workshop, with the degree of Titian's personal contribution uncertain and the subject of differing views. All the versions of the Venus and Musician are in oil on canvas, and fall into two proportions and sizes, with two of the organist versions wider.[3]

The five versions generally regarded as at least largely by Titian are, with an organist, the two in Madrid and one in Berlin, and with a lutenist those in Cambridge and New York.[4] Another version in the Uffizi in Florence is less highly regarded, and has no musician, but a Cupid, as well as a black and white dog at the foot of the bed, eyeing a partridge on the parapet.[5]

In all the versions Venus' bed appears to be set in a loggia or against a large open window with a low stone wall or parapet. Venus is shown at full-length, reclining on pillows. The musician sits on the end of the bed with his back to her, but is turned round to look towards her. By contrast she looks away to the right. He wears contemporary 16th-century dress, as do any small figures in the landscape backgrounds, and has a sword or dagger at his belt. A large red drape takes up the top left corner, and the top right corner in the less wide versions. There is a wide landscape outside, falling into two types. The two Prado versions show avenues of trees and a fountain in what seems to be the gardens of a palace. The other versions have a more open landscape, leading to distant mountains.

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Venus with an Organist and Cupid (Venus and Musician or Venus with an Organist and a Dog)

Titian

Work Overview