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

17th century, follower of Titian Vecellio Venus with a mirror Oil on canvas, 133 x 109 cm The painting in question sagaciously reprises the iconography of Titian's Venus with a mirror, currently housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and datable to around 1552-1553. The iconographic theme of Venus with a mirror turns out to be one of the most fortunate as far as Titian's production is concerned: the original master from Cadore addresses this theme in about thirty occasions throughout his long career; works bearing this subject, now lost, were in the collections of Charles V and the wealthy merchant Niccolò Crasso. The one currently on display in the halls of 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 time that the master from Cadore chooses to portray the Greek divinity not languidly lying down but in a dressing scene, a type of situation that he had already experimented with by portraying 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 value of this variant of the subject was first recognized by Titian himself, who, after having executed the work, decided not to sell it but to keep it for himself and to exhibit it at his atelier, located in Venice at the Biri of San Canciano, for more than twenty years. The reason why Titian kept a painting of such high quality 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 the Titianesque workshop, it could have served as a model to be admired and imitated; moreover, the painting may have prompted visitors to order similar images, consisting of a very functional ante litteram advertising image. It is also because of the prolonged period of the canvas's permanence at Titian's Venetian studio that there are various contemporary or slightly later copies of this painting, among which the work in question can certainly be included. Following the death of the master from Cadore and his son Orazio, who operated in his father's studio between the 1570s and 1580s, the painting was purchased by the noble Venetian family Barbarigo, who, at their rich residence on the Grand Canal, Ca' Barbarigo alla terrazza, already owned vati Titianesque paintings. It is precisely at Ca' Barbarigo that the two greatest scholars of seventeenth-century Venice, Carlo Ridolfi and Marco Boschini, place «a Venus up to her knees, who admires 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 destination for art lovers and young European aristocrats who visited Venice on the occasion of the Grand Tour: Cochin describes it as a «school of Titian» and de Brosses mentions Venus with a mirror as «parfaitement beaux». The work, in the Barbarigo collection still in the nineteenth century, is mentioned in the first official catalog of the collection, the one drawn up in 1845 by Giovanni Carlo Bevilacqua, who also refers to the presence, at the palace on the Grand Canal, of two paintings by Bellini, thirteen by Giorgione, one by Palma the Elder 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 halls of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg until the 1930s: in 1930, 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 Venus, along with twenty other masterpieces from the museum, to the American billionaire Andrew Mellon. Mellon six years later, in 1937, donated his collection of 121 paintings and 21 sculptures, including Titian's splendid Venus with mirror, to the American government to form the first nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, founded on his impulse. The Venus of Washington, in the careful treatment of the texture of the surfaces and in their tactile sensuality, a typical feature especially in the pictorial production of Titian in the 1950s, embodies the ideal of beauty of that era while revealing, rather than covering it, the softness of the white flesh of the goddess wrapped in the red drape edged with gold and silver embroidery and lined with soft fur. The visual fortune of this popular version of Titian's Venus with mirror, spread through contemporary copies and numerous translation prints, was immense even among the great artists of the following century: particularly relevant in this sense are the versions of Rubens (Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza) and Van Dyck (London, British Museum). It is probably in the seventeenth century that this version of Titian's Venus should be placed: the artist manages to faithfully reinterpret the illustrious model, conferring the same monumentality to the female figure. 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 lights and shadows. 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. Just as in various seventeenth-century versions of the painting – first of all that of Rubens at the Thyssen in Madrid – also in this case, compared to the Titianesque variant, the putto busy placing a affected floral wreath on the head of the divinity is absent.