The Balanced Eroticism of Titian's Venus

In a modern era, in which recreational sex, low birthrates, fractured relationships, and sexual commodification are commonplace, the social aspect of eroticism may have been lost. This is one of the messages to be found at "Venus of Urbino: Myth and Image of the Goddess from Antiquity to the Renaissance," an exhibition skillfully built round The Venus of Urbino (1538), one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, now showing at the National Museum of Western Art.

"At first we chose this picture as the focus," Shinsuke Watanabe, a curator at the National Museum of Western Art says, referring to the central work. "Some curators in Florence constructed the concept of this exhibition, based on two earlier exhibitions they had organized – one on Venus and one on erotic art."

Although the main focus is on the paintings, the exhibition also includes several sculptures, and smaller decorative art works. These are included to illustrate certain curatorial points – like the connection between classical Greek and Roman sculpture and Renaissance art – but the effect of their inclusion is to move the exhibition from being a purely visual and cerebral experience to being something more tactile, visceral, and sensual. This is entirely appropriate to the subject matter, but this exhibition exists not only to titillate. Serious points about the nature of eroticism are also made.

Traditionally, at least, eroticism served as an important bridge between the personal and the social. Always an intensely private matter, its role in marriage and procreation, the building blocks of society, also gave it a social significance that has perhaps diminished today. This may not, at first, be apparent in a work like Venus of Urbino, in which a naked young woman looks at us with a sexually inviting look, one hand casually draped on her pudenda.

So provocative was this pose that the American writer Mark Twain's description of it in his book A Tramp Abroad (1880) almost splutters with moral outrage:

"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 [house of prostitution] and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong."

To the uninformed eye, the nude tradition of Western art may sometimes look like a hypocritical attempt to produce pornography for the elite, thinly veiled by classical themes of naked nymphs and goddess to lend a veneer of respectability. But there is more to Titian’s alluring image than this.

"Although this is a very erotic image, it has some other important elements; for example the rose, the small dog, and the myrtle plant," Watanabe points out. "These are symbols of fidelity and eternal love. These elements have nothing to do with pornography. Some elements have to do with pornography, but pornography, as we understand it today, did not exist at this time, because it was invented in the 18th and 19th centuries. Normally porn extracts something very erotic, but in this picture we should not extract the nucleus. The erotic is connected to other aspects like the function of marriage in those days, which was to have children."

Another important detail confirms this view and also helps connect Titian’s work to several other pieces in the exhibition. Behind Titian’s temptress, we can see two servants looking into a cassone, a large, ornate marriage chest that was donated by the bride's parents.

The exhibition includes a large tempera work Venus and Cupid (15th century) by Paolo Schiavo that formerly decorated the inside of the lid of a cassone. The appearance of Venus in a large wooden chest donated by the bride’s parents suggests that these images had a talismanic role, intended to bless a marriage with fertility, rather than a pornographic one.

Venus and Cupid by Paolo Schiavo

By placing a cassone so prominently in his painting, it seems that Titian was also invoking this tradition on behalf of his patron Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino, and his young wife. It is interesting that, while the Renaissance is usually seen as a revival of classical Greek and Roman culture, the use of pre-Christian pagan symbols in this way suggests a continuity of ancient Greek and Roman beliefs throughout the Christian period.

One of the problems in forming a correct opinion of art like this, is that what was intended for private display has become public property – "There the Venus lies for anybody to gloat over that wants to,"" as Twain wrote. By exposing such works in this way, much of the subtlety that once surrounded their presentation has been lost. Schiavo's Venus and Cupid for example would normally have been locked away on the inside surface of a large wooden chest, while Titian's painting was not openly displayed either. According to Watanabe, it would have been covered by a silk painting, rather like Raffaello Vanni’s Prudence Stopping Cupid (17th century) in which the goddess Prudence attempts to stop a curious Cupid unveiling a partially hidden nude painting.

Although eroticism had a complex and ambivalent role in the society of Renaissance Italy, the charm, ingenuity, and playfulness of these works suggest that people of the period had an integrated and balanced attitude to sex and were able to take pleasure in its ambiguities.

C.B.Liddell
International Herald Tribune Asahi Shimbun
21st March, 2008