75,00 €
Fin de la vente : 22j 22h
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oct 63-211
Dimensions : La feuille : 45 cm par 34 cm .
La gravure seule : 20 cm par 14 cm .
Gravure d'époque XXème .
Des traces de manipulations minimes .
Artiste : d'après une oeuvre de Tiziano Vecellio TITIEN (1485-1576)
Envoi rapide et soigné .
oct 63-211
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Venus and Musician refers to a series of paintings by the Venetian Renaissance painter Titian and his workshop.
Titian's 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.[6]
Titian's reclining nudes
Titian's Venus of Urbino, c. 1534, Uffizi, largely the same pose in reverse
Venus and Cupid with Dog and Partridge, mostly Titian's workshop, c. 1555, Uffizi
The painting is the final development of Titian's compositions with a reclining female nude in the Venetian style. After Giorgione's death in 1510 Titian had completed his Dresden Venus, and then around 1534 had painted the Venus of Urbino. A repetition of this from 1545, perhaps a lost recorded Venus sent to Charles V, "was the basis" for the Venus and Musician series.[7] Unlike these, the Cupid in most versions of Venus and Musician does allow a clear identification of the female as Venus, despite the modern decor.[8]
Otherwise the painting falls into the category showing courtesans, though these are also often described as "Venus", if only to retain some propriety. In all an unembarrassed Venus is completely naked, except for a gauzy cloth over her crotch in some versions, but wears several pieces of very expensive jewellery,[9] typical aspects of courtesan pictures.[10] The musician is smartly dressed, and carries a blade weapon, in several versions a large sword with gilded fittings. He could be taken as the client of an expensive Venetian courtesan.
Other reclining nudes are the Pardo Venus (or Jupiter and Antiope, now in the Louvre), "that laboured attempt to recapture his early style",[11] from the mid-1540s. A more original composition and physique, also begun in the mid-1540s, but with versions painted in the 1550s and perhaps 1560s, is used in the series of Danaë paintings, which Kenneth Clark sees as Titian adopting the conventions for the nude prevailing outside Venice; "in the rest of Italy bodies of an entirely different shape had long been fashionable".[12]
For Clark, the Venus of the Venus and Musician versions, where the head changes direction but the body remains exactly the same, is "entirely Venetian, younger sister of all those expensive ladies whom Palma Vecchio, Paris Bordone and Bonifazio painted for local consumption."[13] The nude figures are "rich, heavy and a trifle coarse ... the Venuses of this series are not provocative. The almost brutal directness with which their bodies are presented to us makes them, now that their delicate texture has been removed by restoration, singularly un-aphrodisiac. Moreover, they are far more conventionalized than is evident at first sight."[14]
Allegory?
The erotic appeal of the subject is evident, but some critics have argued for a more allegorical meaning to do with the appreciation of beauty through both the eyes and ears, and the superiority of the former.[15] Whereas the two Prado organists still seem to be playing,
