Fun Facts: Titian's ‘Venus and the Lute Player’
Titian. Venus and the Lute Player, 1565-70. Metropolitan Museum.
Study after Titian drawn on location at the Metropolitan Museum.
Study after Titian
The painting was left unfinished, when Titian died, except for the landscape background, which was fully finished by the artist.
It exists in two versions. One is more finished and resides in Cambridge, and this one that is pictured, is more incomplete and is at the Met Museum in NYC, NY.
After Titian’s death, it was acquired by the artist Tintoretto and some finishing touches were done by another artist, most likely Tintoretto’s son, Domenico.
One of the themes of the painting is a celebration of love; the object is beauty and the means of expression are poetry and music.
It also speaks to the on-going debate, at the time, about “seeing” versus “hearing” as the main ways of perceiving beauty.
The painting also speaks to the Renaissance conventions of courtship, such as the real and the ideal and nature and art.
It also entertains the idea of the 3 kinds of beauty, according to Marsilio Ficino: souls (perceived by the mind), bodies (perceived through the eyes), and sounds (through the ears).
Sources: titian.org, metmuseum.org
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Copyright 2023 Tim Bovey.