Le Dejener Sur l'Herbe c1863
Olympia c1863
A naked woman reclines in a pose of continuous movement on a bed. She is attended by servants. She does not hide her breast but, rather, her right arm props her up to better display her nude physique. She is looking right at us. The gaze is not judgmental or submissive. He gaze is engaging and inviting.
What you may not realize, is that I am not speaking of Manet's Olympia. I am describing a painting of "shock and awe" painted over three hundred years earlier by the master Venetian painter, Titian. It's his Venus of Urbino.
Venus of Urbino c1538
Titian was born around 1488 in the foothills of the Italian Alps. He moved to Venice and joined the studio of Giovanni Bellini, the most famous painter of his generation. He worked with the older Giorgione on a commission at the German merchants residence in Venice. He later received a commission from the Paduan Friars for the high altar of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.
Assunta c1518
Titian dominated painting in Venice. He influenced many other Venetian painters such as Tintoretto, Veronese, and Bassano and elsewhere with Velazquez and Rubens. Titian's fame brought him life-long commissions from Charles V and Philip II of Spain, the early Hapsburg kings who followed the reconquista and reigned during the Counter-Reformation. These courtly commissions were likened to Alexander the Great's court commissions to Appelles. Titian was called Apelles redivivus, Apelles reborn.
Titian's Venetian patrons preferred sacred works like Assunta. His wide-range of patrons outside Venice, however, were interested in secular pieces which Titian described as poesie, or poems. These works almost always included beautiful woman and had a theme of love. With the Venus of Urbino, there is no reference to a classical or allegorical story. We have a reclining, awake, nude woman with two servants. She is not shy and is "beholding the beholder" (Goffen) with her sublime gaze. The colorito (exploiting color and light to unite a composition) combines complementary colors (red and green) with white and the sensuous flesh tones of the nudes underlies Titan's concept of the beautiful woman. The composition is asymmetrical. The small-rendered background is cut off by the bolder, larger foreground forms. The bed is in disarray, suggesting that our beautiful Venus is in a post-lovemaking haze. There is a tension between art and nature in the depiction of flowers on both the cushions of the bed and real flower falling from her right hand.
Was Titian mysogynistic? Did he have a choice since this was a centuries-old accepted view of woman? Was his rendering of our beautifully sublime Venus influenced by the writer Aretino who describes his fictional prostitutes as "exploiters and manipulators of men"? Is this pornography (porne meaning "whore" in Greek)?
In 1510, Titian completed Giorgione's Sleeping Venus. We see so many similarities that we must believe Titan's concept of a beautiful woman was begun 30 years earlier to his creation of the Venus of Urbino.
Sleeping Venus c1510
Venus of Urbino c1538
Good personal observations. But do you think the gaze of Manet's Victorine Meurund is "inviting?" Not at all in the manner of the Titian. She is quite aware of her objectification --for money.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Professor Hamburgh, although I would say that Venus of Urbino is almost displayed more sexually than Manet's Olympia. Olympia is clearly non-emotional prostitution, while Venus of Urbino is still sexualized, especially by the positioning of her hand. However the Venus of Urbino is much more welcoming.
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