Titian - Venus and Cupid with an Organist 1548-1549
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Venus and Cupid with an Organist 1548-1549
150x218cm oil on canvas
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, Spain
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Museo Nacional 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).