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Sleeping Venus
Giorgione and Titian · Renaissance & Mannerism
- Artist
- Giorgione (c. 1477–1510), completed by Titian (c. 1488–1576)
- Date
- c. 1508–1510
- Dimensions
- 108.5 x 175 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany
The Sleeping Venus shows the goddess of love asleep in an open landscape, one arm behind her head. Begun by Giorgione, who died young of the plague, it was finished by his pupil Titian, who is thought to have painted the landscape and sky.
A closer look
Venus lies on a white sheet and red cushion, her body forming a long, gentle line that echoes the rolling hills behind her. Her eyes are closed, and she seems entirely unaware of being looked at, which gives the picture a dreamlike calm. This reclining nude in a landscape became a model for centuries of painters: Titian’s own Venus of Urbino, Goya’s Naked Maja and Manet’s Olympia all descend from it.
History of the painting
In 1699 the painting was bought for the collection of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, as a work by Titian, and it entered the Dresden gallery. Only in 1880 did the Italian connoisseur Giovanni Morelli argue that it was by Giorgione, completed after his early death by the young Titian, an attribution now generally accepted. During the Second World War it was evacuated with the Dresden collection, taken to Moscow in 1945 by the Soviet army, and returned to Dresden in 1955.
More by Giorgione and Titian
Famous works elsewhere
- The Three Philosophers 1500
- Laura 1506
- Self-portrait 1509
- Christ Carrying the Cross 1506
- Nude 1508
- Frieze of the Liberal and Mechanical Arts 1496