Venus of Urbino

A nude woman reclines on a rumpled bed and looks straight out at us, roses in one hand, a little dog asleep at her feet, maidservants rummaging in a chest behind. Titian takes the chaste, sleeping Venus of his older contemporary Giorgione and wakes her, brings her indoors, and makes her frankly, knowingly available - sacred myth turned to warm domestic eros, probably to mark a Urbino marriage. The dog hints at fidelity, the chest at a bride's trousseau. The glowing flesh and red-and-white palette are pure Venetian; the pose would echo down three centuries to Manet's scandalous Olympia.