This is not the sleeping goddess painted a few years earlier by Giorgione, but a real woman in flesh and blood, reclining on the sheets in front of the viewer.
While the Renaissance installed these Neoplatonic ideals in Western culture, it also generated changes in the social regard and purposes of art. If Florentine artists were known for the clarity of their design, Venetian artists were known for their mastery of color. Titian was the greatest painter of that school, bringing a rich palette to his portraits, altarpieces, and mythological subjects like Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23). His Venus of Urbino(1538), one of his best-known of his works, approached the nude with specificity and sensuality. This is not the sleeping goddess painted a few years earlier by Giorgione, but a real woman in flesh and blood, reclining on the sheets in front of the viewer. A testament to its iconic status, Titian’s Venus would later be quoted by artists like Édouard Manet.