The Venus of Urbino is an oil painting by Italian painter Titian, depicting a nude young woman, traditionally identified with the goddess Venus, reclining on a couch or bed in the sumptuous surroundings of a Renaissance palace. Work on the painting seems to have begun anywhere from 1532 or 1534, and was perhaps completed in 1534, but not sold until 1538. It is currently held in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.
Venus Anadyomene is one of the iconic representations of the goddess Venus (Aphrodite), made famous in a much-admired painting by Apelles, now lost, but described in Pliny's Natural History, with the anecdote that the great Apelles employed Campaspe, a mistress of Alexander the Great, for his model. According to Athenaeus, the idea of Aphrodite rising from the sea was inspired by the courtesan Phryne, who, during the time of the festivals of the Eleusinia and Poseidonia, often swam nude in the sea. A scallop shell, often found in Venus Anadyomenes, is a symbol of the female vulva.
Dirck Barendsz or Theodor Barendszoon (1534–1592) was a Dutch Renaissance painter from Amsterdam who traveled to Italy in his youth to learn from the Italian masters, most notably Titian.
Venus Anadyomene is an oil painting by Titian, dating to around 1520. It depicts Venus rising from the sea and wringing her hair, with a shell visible at the bottom left, taken from a description of Venus by Greek poet Hesiod in which she was born fully-grown from a shell. The shell is smaller than usual in scenes of the birth of Venus, such as Botticelli's, and is just intended to identify the subject rather than be a boat-like vessel for Venus, as in Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and other depictions.
Fertility in art refers to any artistic work representing or portraying fertility, which usually refers to successful breeding among humans, although it may also mean successful agriculture and animal husbandry. It includes engravings, drawings, paintings, sculptures, figurines, portraits and even literary works. In Paleolithic art, fertility is usually associated with figurines with exaggerated parts of human anatomy.
The Death of Actaeon is a late work by the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, painted in oil on canvas from about 1559 to his death in 1576 and now in the National Gallery in London. It is very probably one of the two paintings the artist stated he had started and hopes to finish in a letter to their commissioner Philip II of Spain during June 1559. However, most of Titian's work on this painting possibly dates to the late 1560s, but with touches from the 1570s. Titian seems never to have resolved it to his satisfaction, and the painting apparently remained in his studio until his death in 1576. There has been considerable debate as to whether it is finished or not, as with other very late Titians, such as the Flaying of Marsyas, which unlike this has a signature, perhaps an indication of completion.
The Eleven Caesars was a series of eleven painted half-length portraits of Roman emperors made by Titian in 1536–1540 for Federico II, Duke of Mantua. They were among his best-known works, inspired by the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius. Titian's paintings were originally housed in a new room inside the Palazzo Ducale di Mantova. Bernardino Campi added a twelfth portrait in 1562.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens' highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
The Venetian painter Titian and his workshop made at least six versions of the same composition showing Danaë, painted between about 1544 and the 1560s. The scene is based on the mythological princess Danaë, as – very briefly – recounted by the Roman poet Ovid, and at greater length by Boccaccio. She was isolated in a bronze tower following a prophecy that her firstborn would eventually kill her father. Although aware of the consequences, Danaë was seduced and became pregnant by Zeus, who, inflamed by lust, descended from Mount Olympus to seduce her in the form of a shower of gold.
A composition of Venus and Adonis by the Venetian Renaissance artist Titian has been painted a number of times, by Titian himself, by his studio assistants and by others. In all there are some thirty versions that may date from the 16th century, the nudity of Venus undoubtedly accounting for this popularity. It is unclear which of the surviving versions, if any, is the original or prime version, and a matter of debate how much involvement Titian himself had with surviving versions. There is a precise date for only one version, that in the Prado in Madrid, which is documented in correspondence between Titian and Philip II of Spain in 1554. However, this appears to be a later repetition of a composition first painted a considerable time earlier, possibly as early as the 1520s.
Joos van Winghe, Jodocus a Winghe or Jodocus van Winghen (1544–1603) was a Flemish painter and print designer. He is known for his history paintings, portraits, allegories and genre scenes, including merry companies. He worked in Brussels as court painter and left Flanders after the Fall of Antwerp in 1584. He then worked in Frankfurt for the remainder of his career. In Germany he enjoyed the patronage of Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II and adopted a more clearly Mannerist style.
The Three Ages of Man is a painting by Titian, dated between 1512 and 1514, and now displayed at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. The 90 cm high by 151 cm wide Renaissance art work was most likely influenced by Giorgione's themes and motifs of landscapes and nude figures—Titian was known to have completed some of Giorgione's unfinished works after Giorgione died at age 33 of the plague in 1510. The painting represents the artist's conception of the life cycle. Childhood and manhood are synonymous with earthly love and death. These and the approaching old age are drawn realistically. Titian's widely chosen topic in art history, ages of man, mixed with his own allegorical interpretation make The Three Ages of Man one of Titian's most famous works.
Tarquin and Lucretia is an oil painting by Titian completed in 1571, when the artist was in his eighties, for Philip II of Spain. It is signed, and considered to have been finished entirely by Titian himself. It is one of a series of great works from Titian's last years, but unlike some of these, is fully finished. It is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.
A Man with a Quilted Sleeve is a painting of about 1510 by the Venetian painter Titian in the National Gallery, London, measuring 81.2 by 66.3 centimetres. Though the quality of the painting has always been praised, there has been much discussion as to the identity of the sitter. It was long thought to be a portrait of Ariosto, then a self-portrait, but since 2017 has been called Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo by the gallery, having also been called merely Portrait of a Man, the title used here, The Man with the Blue Sleeve, and no doubt other variants.
Venus with a Mirror is a painting by Titian, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and it is considered to be one of the collection's highlights.
Cornelis van der Geest was a spice merchant from Antwerp, who used his wealth to support the Antwerp artists and to establish his art collection. He was also the dean of the haberdashers guild.
The Fall of Man, Adam and Eve or Adam and Eve in the earthly paradise is a 1628–1629 painting by Rubens, now in the Prado in Madrid. Once attributed to the minor Dutch artist Karel van Mander, it is now recognised as a work by Rubens.
Perseus and Andromeda is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Titian, now in the Wallace Collection, in London. It was painted in 1554–1556 as part of a series of mythological paintings called "poesie" ("poetry") intended for King Philip II of Spain. The paintings took subjects from the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, in this case Book IV, lines 663–752, and all featured female nudes.
Nymph and Shepherd, also called Shepherd and Nymph, is an oil painting by the Venetian master Titian, made about 1570. The painting is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in Vienna.
Penitent Magdalene is a c. 1550 oil on canvas painting by Titian, now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples.
Version by Andrea Schiavone
1560s copy by anonymous artist
Alexander the Great visits the studio of Apelles, 1628-1637
Apelles painting Campaspe, 1630
