Provenance Behind " Venus With A Mirror"

Portrait: Venus with a Mirror composed in 1555.(Titan)

Venus with a Mirror was composed in 1555 by Titian and remained in his studio until he died. The painting has remarkable quality and Titian constructed the painting alone without any help from artists of his time working in the same studio. Thus, Venus with a Mirror also shows visual spectra of “rich textures and sumptuous colors. Venus gazes at her reflection in a mirror held by Cupid, while a second putto reaches up to crown her with a wreath of flowers” (“Titian Late Renaissance”). The painting also shows the figure of Venus covering her breast and she pulls her garment across the surface area that surrounds her private area. The colors in the painting work will together. The garments that Venus wears carefully and descriptively goes well with her creamy skin. Also, “the metallic embroidery and gleaming jewels provide textural contrasts to the softness of her fabrics, skin, and hair” (“Titian Late Renaissance”).

Some of Titian’s inspiration for the work stemmed from the classical Venus Pudica. He was also seen to show how beautiful the female form is in the representation of Venus’s body. The Venus with a mirror is primarily about vision, and about being seen, about reality and its reflection, and about the exaltation of beauty that is embodied in the goddess and knowable through the spirit” (“Venice” http://venice.umwblogs.org). Thus, Venus with a Mirror also models Titian’s intent to showcase beautiful women. In many of his paintings of women, he shows them all as being ladies rather than expose their bodies in a negative fashion as if they were mistresses. According to the article titled “Titian’s Venus of Urbino,” “Titian’s Venus is alert, powerful, more dominating than dominated by her unseen male beholder” (“Titian’s Venus” http://employees.oneonta.edu). Venus as she is depicted in Venus with a Mirror and many other of Titian’s work is seen to possess domination of her body and also esteem herself with liberation and embrace the formation of her voluptuous size. Finally, Venus with a Mirror is a classical work of Renaissance art that esteems itself in the empowerment of a female body and it is now in the Andrew W. Mellon Collection.