LECTURE ON TITIAN'S VENUS OF URBINO AND EROTICISM IN ART

LECTURE ON TITIAN’S VENUS OF URBINO AND EROTICISM IN ART

SOURCE: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/titian_venus_urbino.html

Titian's Venus of Urbino

In March of 1538, Guidobaldo della Rovere, who would become the Duke of
Urbino, wrote to his agent in Venice about a painting by Titian he wanted to
acquire. He refers to the painting as la donna nuda (the nude woman). This
work has been identified as the Venus of Urbino.

Mark Twain, in his Tramp Abroad, recorded his response to his encounter with
the Titian's Venus of Urbino:

You enter [the Uffizi] and proceed to that most-visited little gallery that exists
in the world --the Tribune-- and there, against the wall, without obstructing rap
or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest
picture the world possesses -- Titian's Venus. It isn't that she is naked and
stretched out on a bed --no, it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I
ventured to describe that attitude there would be a fine howl --but there the
Venus lies for anybody to gloat over that wants to --and there she has a right
to lie, for she is a work of art, and art has its privileges. I saw a young girl
stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gazing long and absorbedly at
her, I saw aged infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest.
How I should like to describe her --just to see what a holy indignation I could
stir up in the world...yet the world is willing to let its sons and its daughters
and itself look at Titian's beast, but won't stand a description of it in
words....There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure thought
-- I am well aware of that. I am not railing at such. What I am trying to
emphasize is the fact that Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort.
Without any question it was painted for a bagnio (He means ‘brothel’ not ‘bath’
R.A.G.) and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth,
it is a trifle too strong for any place but a public art gallery.
As suggested by the following excerpt from David Freedberg's book The Power
of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989),
there has been a wide range of critical (and not so critical) responses to the
Venus of Urbino:

Traditional critical responses aestheticise eroticism to the point where it
disappears. Mark Twain, not an art historian, goes to the heart of the matter.
Art Historians however, characteristically dwell on the classical beauty of the
nude or they drown their first and obvious response ( if we are honest,
something like, ‘cor!’) in technical analysis of light, form colour, influences and
antecedents along with complex iconographic interpretations. Some of these
interpretations may even have some truth in them, but they do not feel free
to sate the obvious, without which no decent and truthful analysis can be
made, i.e. that this is an erotic picture probably meant to titillate.

A forthright description of the main focus of attention intended by the painter,
essential to any disciplined writing on a picture, could run as follows:

 A naked young woman looks frankly at the viewer; her chestnut hair falls over
her naked shoulders; her nipples are erect; with her left hand she only half
covers her pudenda --she almost toys with them in auto eroticism-- while the
shadow around them suggests (if it does not actually indicate) her pubic hair.
She is completely naked except for the ring on her little finger and the bracelet
around her wrist.

Although in this modern era, there is scarcely any human activity that is still
accepted as essentially private and the most graphic film, pictures and
discussions are permitted and reticence is seen as repressive and prudish.
However, even now, I think, when we go into a picture gallery, where we
expect to see ‘High Art’, we feel we should be ‘edified’, ‘lifted spiritually’ and
are reluctant to identify a picture as consciously erotic and certainly not as
intentionally pornographic. ‘There’s nothing dirty about a woman’s body!‘ we
cry, just to show our liberal, Post-Modern unshockability but the fact that we
have to utter such a cry gives the lie to the statement. There is nothing dirty
here but it is not spiritual, it’s primarily physical and meant to stimulate us
sexually.

In Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, Venus is asleep, so she is neither immodest nor
sexually aware: we are the voyeuristic interlopers here, and should beware of
the fate of Actaeon.      The painting is a Venus pudicus, ‘modest Venus’, a
Classical pose deriving from a famous statue of Praxiteles, [SLIDE] where she
unconsciously protects her sexual parts shielding them from view. This is
mirrored in the Giorgione’s sleeping figure. The deliberate placing of the hand
by Titian’s Venus however, is seem by some as quite different from a ‘pudicus’
‘modest’ image. Titian’s Venus is conscious and the gesture is allied to a
straight stare, right in our face. The fingers are bent and, according to some
are indicating, not shielding her sexual organs, or indeed stimulating them.
She is unashamed and very deliberately erotic. There are of course a panoply
of symbols to suggest that this is within marriage: the dog, who appears in the
portrait of Guidobaldo’s mother, the domestic scene, almost like a Dutch
interior of the period with the almost funny chambermaid, bottom up,
searching for clothing in the marriage chest.

Titian may indeed have taken his inspiration from Netherlandish art. Although
the first female nudes came from the Pisani, father and son, sculpting pulpits
in Pisa, [SLIDE] it is more likely that Titian takes his image from Hans
Memling in his portrayal of Vanitas, [SLIDE] where the naked figure is
accompanied by a little dog of a breed called ‘griffons’, symbolising faithful love
in marriage as a cure or at least a controlling mechanism for vanity and lust, in
marriage. The Dutch influence can be seen in Titian’s Venus, in the domestic
scene portrayed on the left of the picture.

There are two worlds here: the more public domestic world expressed in the
vocabulary of the Netherlands, and the private bedroom scene that is almost

purely Venetian.     In the latter, the female nude body is right against the
picture plane and brightly lit. It is what we look at first. It is as though the
artist is sharing a secret, saying, ‘the ordinary world of maids and housework
carries on its workaday duties, unaware that at the same time, such a little
distance away, a carnal feast is offered, in the privacy of the marriage bed’.
The two maids look faintly ridiculous; their activities belonging to another, and
for the time, irrelevant, world.         Manet’s picture clearly identifies his
interpretation of what Titian’s means by a parodic second picture: this time an
overt picture of a known prostitute entitled ‘Olympia’, at the time a Parisian
euphemism for a prostitute.

Oneonta University Site:

Manet's protagonist is a prostitute --not a courtesan, as some critics have
assumed Titian's Venus to be, but more the nineteenth-century equivalent of
the Renaissance meretrice. The distinction among these categories were not
mere niceties in Renaissance Venice. In general, a courtesan, or mistress, was
distinguished from a meretrice (prostitute ) (Who charges? R.A.G.) or puttana
(whore) by her class (or class pretensions), by her superior economic status,
and by the social status and (limited) number of her lovers. As a concomitant
of these social and "romantic" aspects of her position, a courtesan might also
claim exemption from sumptuary laws concerning dress and legislation
regarding where she might live.

See http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/titian_venus_urbino.html

Nonetheless, we seem reluctant to acknowledge the idea that great artists set
out to be salacious and sexy. Some emotions are deemed appropriate for high
art, others, it appears, even today, are off limits in that context. As ‘cultured’
people, perhaps with some training in Art History, we commonly refuse, or
refuse to admit, those kinds of response that are openly expressed by people
less schooled than ourselves who feel free to state the obvious that it requires
no training to spot! [to demonstrate Freedberg's point read the discussion of
the Titian’s Venus of Urbino is plainly erotic, even though we have become
used to still more candid pictures, like Manet's Olympia, and we are used to
page three girls and the whole world of advertising and film that are extremely
overt in their sexual representations, in the Art Gallery, we seem to have
difficulty in admitting that in the past, or in ‘Great Art’ like Titian's Venus, part
of the point and aim is to stimulate sexual feelings. it is as though it is fine for
art to stimulate grief, heroism, compassion, indeed a vast range of emotions
EXCEPT SEXUAL FEELING. Why should this be so?

I think the answer lies in the difficulty we have in telling the difference, the
boundary, between honest, pleasurable eroticism, and pornography, so we
draw a veil over all sexually stimulating pictures.        Perhaps we need to
distinguish the role of the viewer here and the relationship to the artist’s
intentions. In Giorgione’s picture, the naked woman is asleep and does not
know that she is being observed.         In my previous description I bandied
academic art historian’s terms about, calling her a ‘Venus pudicus’, ‘Modest

Venus‘ picture, and absolving her of immodesty because she is asleep.
Arguably though, this is a more pornographic picture than Titian’s frankly
inviting young woman in the buff. She knows she is being looked at and she
looks right back, straight in our eye. In Giorgione’s picture however, our role is
that of the interloper. We do not have her permission, she is asleep in her
nudity and we are therefore assuming the role of voyeurs.           We commit
scopophilia (sexual pleasure derived from pictures) when we look at her if she
moves us at all. For some repressed males, Stolen glances are far more erotic
than the open, unapologetic frank invitation of Titian’s Venus.

      There is another problem for the art Historian or critic. Whilst a nude
woman, painted as a meditation of the sublimity of the feminine or the virginal
or the maternal may not be erotic and may not be intended to be, there is a
category, a genre of nude painting that is overtly intended to be erotic, to
provoke arousal. It is clear that if a painting claims to be a representation of
Venus rather than for example Diana, or Juno, we are gazing on a
representation of sexual passion.

Although ‘niceness’ in Art historians may make them reluctant to discuss this,
the obvious and basic question about erotic art when assessing whether it is
any good then is, ‘Does it work? Is it sexually stimulating?‘ For reasons of
decorum, both art historians and art critics flee from addressing this in the
public print. However, if we acknowledge that erotic art is legitimate because
Art can and should be free to express all aspects of human nature, then the
critic must ask himself whether it moves him or her sexually. If it doesn’t, it’s
a failure!

However, whilst there are two basic questions here:

1) Are we guilty of a measure of hypocrisy here? Are we saying that sexually
   stimulating art is ‘High Art’ and ‘sublime’ if the painter is any good, and
   ‘filthy pornography if the picture is bad and the artist less talented? In
   other words, have we confused ethics with aesthetics here?

2) The second and more basic question is one of judgement.            If we say
   honestly, that in a depiction of Venus (i.e. a representation of sexual
   feeling), a mark of its success is whether or not it is arousing. Now this is
   problematic because there is a marked gender difference in people’s
   responses to potentially sexually stimulating art in general and the female
   nude in particular. Men are far more easily and strongly stimulated by
   visual representations of sexuality than women, so perhaps they make
   better judges of this kind of art, dare I say? Heterosexual women are not
   sexually moved by representations of the naked female body even though
   they can enjoy beauty and intelligently understand the means that the artist
   has employed in order to make his painting erotic. Male nudes rarely move
   women sexually, for the reason I gave just now. However, for all of us, it is
   clear that renderings of Venus in general and this picture in particular are
   meant to evoke masculine sexual responses in the sixteenth-century, and

down the ages, and that it did so then and has done so down the ages, as
  witness Manet’s ironic parody.

If you too want to ‘spiritualise’ or ‘aestheticise’ the picture and give it a high-
toned ‘symbolic’ meaning, rather than seeing it as straightforwardly erotic
because you feel that a Renaissance artist of stature, like Titian, would surely
not involve himself in erotica, then I must argue my case.

The first point to make is that before you can argue that the erotic matter in
the picture is symbolic, you must recognize the literal meaning of the painting
which is indeed, simply erotic as a starting point. So there is no escape from
estimating its erotic content however hard we try to aestheticise later. The
measure of its erotic success then, conditions its efficacy as a symbol.

The tendency to want not to accept eroticism for its own sake, is partly to do
with our sense of the history of Art. Renaissance Art was the inheritor of the
Mediaeval tradition.     In mediaeval art there was a constraint on subject.
Paintings could only be about religious topics and had to move the viewer away
from concerns with this world and into a non-physical realm, by definition
more holy because transcending or indeed eschewing physical, bodily
concerns. This attitude was what the Humanists in the Renaissance countered,
seeing a reflection of God’s creative power in the physical world. However, not
all Renaissance artists abandoned the discomfort with sex and materiality, and
this was clearly seen in the conflict between Florence and Venice, Michelangelo
and Titian, in terms of technique.

       The Form versus Colour argument: Florentines versus Venetians

The Florentines in general (from whose artistic culture an understanding of
perspective came) and Michelangelo in particular felt that form, ‘disegno’ (i.e.
draftsmanship or physical posture and mass in a perspectival setting) was
more important than colour. The Venetians on the other hand felt that colour
was far more important than form, perhaps as a result of the flickering light
reflected off the waters which makes solid buildings appear constantly in
motion, seemingly slightly altering their form from second to second. The
consistent impression is of brilliant colour in the sparkling light. The Venetians
argued that ‘colorito’, ‘pigmentation’ was the more important of the two
aspects of art. They felt that their highly specialised knowledge of pigments to
render ‘colore’, colour, was the fundamental technique of great painting. The
Florentines based their insistence on form on Plato and Aristotle who when
discussing the universe, held that there was such a thing as pure, base matter,
at the bottom of the chain of being, which remains inert and useless till it is
given form. The creation of the world gave shape to matter and everything in
the world, including human beings. All created things then, consist of two
elements: matter and form. Matter was female and physical and inferior to
masculine form, which was intellectual and related to soul. Matter is shapeless
and lacks significance till it is shaped by form. Michelangelo is not perhaps the
best artist to consult when considering renderings of women. [SLIDE] His
Sibyls in the Vatican who with one sweet exception, are muscled men in drag,

one of whom could be mistaken for a bargee.          Michelangelo had no love for
women, really.

Titian, unlike Michelangelo was perfectly at home with earthly delights and
rewards. He had no quarrel with the world and in that sense is truly a man of
the Renaissance. He made a massive fortune from his workshops, employing
large numbers of apprentices to paint in clothing and background and himself
often only painting faces, hands and the more prominent features. In this way
his annual production of paintings was amazing and a huge fortune was
amassed. He seems also, from the evidence of the paintings, to have enjoyed
the female form.      Whilst anatomically credible in terms of form, the real
eroticism of the painting is typically Venetian, it is the delicious, delicate
warmth of the skin tones that make it almost touchable. Venus is seen not as
a demure and submissive figure, subordinate to a dominant male and waiting
for him to bestow significance upon her, but an embodiment of female power.
She looks us straight in the eye, and is fully aware of her own erotic power as
a force in Nature. She is the goddess of sexuality the regenerating power in
creation.

In answer to those who wish to move away from physicality and into myth and
symbol, we must ask, ‘Is it really true that serious, famous artists of the
Renaissance never sought to be sexy for the sake of being sexy?’ The answer
is no.    Deliberately sexy art can almost be seen as a sign of the new
Humanism, in that famous artists did indeed forsake the Mediaeval distrust of
open sensuousness and sensuality, seeing man in both spirit and physical body
as the highest work of the Creator. The Renaissance Humanists delighted in all
aspects of a Human being, including his sexuality. This was not accepted
without demur. The more conservative, puritanical elements in the culture
were after all, burning Botticelli’s paintings in ‘the bonfire of the vanities’ under
Savanorola in Florence, merely because they portrayed Classical gods as a
symbolic pictorial language. These were portrayed as ‘Pagan’ by the puritan
element, even though used to convey subtle Christian moral and spiritual
meanings.

It is however, true that once the Classical myths were seen as a symbolic
language, they could be used as an excuse to portray erotic or indeed
pornographic acts, ‘I’m only representing a Classical Myth’. However, what we
are asking here is, ‘Did the famous artists of the Renaissance deliberately
produce sexy pictures for the sake of titillation, or is that really outside the
parameters of serious art and artists?     The answer to the question as to
whether they ever set out to titillate is a resounding, ‘Yes! They certainly
produced erotic art where eroticism is the main, indeed the only point, with no
other agenda whatever’. To illustrate this it is perhaps relevant to look at the
famous scandal surrounding Giulio Romano, and the engraver, Marcantonio
Raimondi, who reproduced his illustrations to a Renaissance Sex manual and
got sent to prison for his pains.

The work in question is ‘I Modi’, ‘The Ways’ or ‘The Positions’, published in
1524. This was also known as The Sixteen Pleasures, or the Latin title, De

omnibus Veneris Schematibus, ‘Concerning all the methods of making love’.
Under the guise of illustrating Classical stories of love, sixteen different
positions for sexual congress were illustrated.        The original edition was
completely destroyed by the Catholic church, but fragments of a later edition
survived. The original pictures were by Giulio Romano, who was working for
Federico II Gonzaga and his new Palazzo del Te in Mantua. Perhaps they were
too racy for transferring to the walls of the bedchamber (‘Think of the morals
of he maids’) and so now no longer adorn the walls.           However, without
Raimondi’s knowledge, (or so Raimondi said) the carnal paintings were
converted for use as a sex manual and engraved by Raimondi. The first edition
was printed and sold in 1524 and led to Raimondi’s imprisonment by Pope
Clement VII. The copies were systematically found and destroyed by the
celibate Church authorities. The poet, Aretino had a copy which he much
valued. Raimondi claimed that he had no knowledge of the engravings till the
poet, Aretino came to see the originals at Mantua because he had seen the
prints. In any case, the Giulio Romano works were for private viewing and
were not put out in public. That fact, added to the great poiitical power and
influence of Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, might make the Pope reluctant to
prosecute him. Aretino arranged for Raimondi’s release from prison and then
immediately encouraged him to make another edition of I Modi, which despite
Vatican fury, was brought out three years later in 1527. This second enlarged
edition was published with sonnets written by Pietro Aretino, which described
the sexual acts depicted. Again the Vatican responded by imposing an all out
ban on the book and no copy is now known about. However, we know what
the illustrations looked like because there are engraved copies of Raimondi’s
original engravings. Although now lost, at least one edition of I Modi seems to
have survived till the Eighteenth Century, when Carracci produced a series of
prints that agree in every particular with the fragments of the originals. The
problem was that the original Raimondi printing plates were lost, so that
Carracci had to ‘remake’ the plates, presumably being careful to make exact
copies for a new edition.     The fragments from the original Raimondi edition
are preserved in the British Museum and with them a set of crude woodcuts,
copies of Raimondi’s engravings, produced in 1550. The similarities between
Caracci’s supposed copies and the other two sources are too close to be
accidental.    it seems safe to assume that the eighteenth century Carracci
engravings are copies of a set of published prints of Raimondi’s originals.

We have seen then, that much before the date of Titian’s Venus of Urbino,
(1538) there were explicit erotic images produced by an artist of great fame,
Giulio Romano, (First edition 1524, second 1527) precisely to titillate and with
little or no evidence of ‘higher’ symbolic meaning.          Even though the
personages are Classical in so far as their names are concerned, many
episodes of coitus have no original Classical story to validate the illustration.
The Classicism here is shallow and only a cover for the real point of the
paintings which is erotic stimulation of the beholder.

Once the initial erotic point of the picture is acknowledged however, discussion
and evaluation do not end there. Paintings can have more than one message,

or a single message can be nuanced and can change as we take in more and
more of the contents and deliberately created atmosphere of the picture. The
best thing here is to look at examples of Raimondi’s work

[SLIDES]

Having seen these examples of erotic art before Titian’s Venus:

a: Do you find them purely erotic or genuinely there it illustrate Classical myth
or having some other wider purpose?

b: If they are purely erotic, do you think that that necessarily makes them
pornographic or is frank portrayal of healthy sex a legitimate purpose for high
art?

c: Does the quality of the painting rescue it from being pornographic, or is
there some other definition of pornographic art?

c: what is your definition of visual pornography?

Returning to Titian’s Venus, what the viewer is asked to consider, is whether
Titian’s Venus is:

• primarily symbolic, if so, of what?

• primarily erotic?

• actually pornographic.

This will involve an initial discussion to determine what the difference is
between pornographic and erotic art.