17th century, follower of Tiziano Vecellio, Venus with a mirror

17th century, follower of Tiziano Vecellio

Venus in the mirror

Oil on canvas, 133 x 109 cm

The painting in question cleverly takes up the iconography of Titian's Venus with a Mirror, currently preserved at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and datable to around 1552-1553. The iconographic theme of Venus with a mirror is one of the most successful in Titian's production: the master from Cadore tackles this theme on about thirty occasions during his long career; works depicting this subject, now lost, were found in the collections of Charles V and the wealthy merchant Niccolò Crasso. The one currently exhibited in the National Gallery of Art in Washington is considered by art historians to be one of the most successful versions of this subject; it is probably the first occasion in which the master from Cadore chooses to portray the Greek divinity not languidly reclining but in a toilet scene, a type of situation that he had already experimented with when portraying some anonymous women. In this case, the pose of the goddess takes up the model of a modest Venus, probably the so-called Venus de' Medici, then in Rome, which the painter had the opportunity to see during his stay in that city in 1545-1546 "learning from the marvelous ancient stones". The first to recognize the value of this variant of the subject was Titian himself, who, after having executed the work, decided not to sell it but to keep it for himself and to exhibit it in his atelier, located in Venice at the Biri di San Canciano, for more than twenty years. The reason why Titian kept such a high quality painting for so long is uncertain, but this Venus may have been a source of inspiration for those who worked for or visited the artist. For the members of Titian's workshop, it may have served as a model to be admired and imitated; furthermore, the painting may have encouraged visitors to order similar images, being a sort of highly functional advertising image ante litteram. It is also due to the prolonged period of time that the canvas remained in Titian's Venetian studio that various contemporary or slightly later copies of this painting exist, among which the work in question can certainly be included. Following the death of the master from Cadore and his son Orazio, who worked in his father's studio between the 1570s and 1580s, the painting was purchased by the noble Venetian Barbarigo family, who already owned several Titian paintings in their rich residence on the Grand Canal, Ca' Barbarigo alla Terrazza. It is precisely at Ca' Barbarigo that the two greatest scholars of seventeenth-century Venice, Carlo Ridolfi and Marco Boschini, placed "a Venus up to her knees, gazing at herself in the mirror with two Loves", unanimously identified by art historians with the painting in question. In the eighteenth century, the Barbarigo collection became a must-see for art-loving travellers and young European aristocrats visiting Venice on the Grand Tour: Cochin describes it as a “school of Titian” and de Brosses mentions the Venus with a Mirror as “parfaitement beaux”. The work, still in the Barbarigo collection in the nineteenth century, is cited in the first official catalogue of the collection, the one drawn up in 1845 by Giovanni Carlo Bevilacqua, who also refers to the presence, in the palace on the Grand Canal, of two paintings by Bellini, thirteen by Giorgione, one by Palma il Vecchio and one by Tintoretto. In 1850 the last heir of the Barbarigo family, having fallen into disgrace, sold various paintings to the Tsar of Russia Nicholas I. The work was exhibited in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg until the 30s: in 900, in order to accumulate foreign currency for the first of the five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union, the Soviet government secretly sold the Venus, along with twenty other masterpieces of the museum, to the American billionaire Andrew Mellon. Six years later, in 1937, Mellon donated his collection of 121 paintings and 21 sculptures, including Titian's splendid Venus with a Mirror, to the American government to form the first nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, founded at his instigation. The Washington Venus, in the careful treatment of the texture of the surfaces and in their tactile sensuality, a typical feature especially in Titian's pictorial production of the 1550s, embodies the ideal of beauty of that era while revealing, rather than covering it, the softness of the goddess's white flesh wrapped in the red cloth surrounded by gold and silver embroidery and lined with soft fur. The visual success of this popular version of Titian's Venus with a Mirror, which spread through contemporary copies and numerous translated prints, was immense even among the great artists of the following century: particularly relevant in this sense are the versions by Rubens (Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) and Van Dyck (London, British Museum). This version of Titian's Venus should probably be placed in the seventeenth century: the artist manages to faithfully reinterpret the illustrious model, giving the female figure the same monumentality. The brightness of the goddess's complexion contrasts sharply with the deep red of the cloak that partially covers her body, in an interesting play of light and shadow. Details of particular elegance, taken from the masterpiece of the master from Cadore, coincide with the precious jewels and the elaborate frame of the mirror vigorously supported by Cupid.