Sacred and Profane Love
Titian, 1514
Sacred and Profane Love is an oil on canvas that Titian painted around 1514-1515 within the Venetian school of the High Renaissance. The scene brings together two women and a child beside an richly carved stone fountain, in a landscape lit by the glow of sunset. One of them, luxuriously dressed, sits beside Cupid while the naked goddess Venus attends her. Many details suggest a bride: her loose hair crowned with myrtle, a plant sacred to Venus, the sheer veil over her shoulders, the roses in her hand, and the girdle, a symbol of chastity. For reading the painting, the most telling elements are what the figures hold: the clothed woman holds a vessel full of gold and gems, a sign of earthly happiness that does not last, while Venus holds a lamp with a burning flame, representing the eternal joy of heaven. The work reflects the Neoplatonism of the period, in which earthly beauty mirrors the heavenly and contemplating it leads toward the divine. The moralizing title was not Titian's own; it was attached at least two centuries later, and the Borghese inventories recorded other names before. The coat of arms carved on the fountain identifies the patron, Nicolò Aurelio, secretary of the Venetian Council of Ten, who was then marrying the young widow Laura Bagarotto, so the canvas may have been a wedding gift. It is now kept in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. A restoration in 1995 revealed that the white mantle of the semi-nude figure was originally red. Interpretations vary: the traditional reading, associated with Erwin Panofsky, sees a contrast between human and divine love, while other proposals link it to Francesco Colonna's romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili or to the intellectual circle of Pietro Bembo, though none is conclusive.
- Painter
- Titian
- Date
- 1514
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 118 × 279 cm
- Museum
- Galleria Borghese, Rome
- Movement
- High Renaissance, Venetian school
- Genre
- allegory
- Depicts
- landscape, coat of arms, naked woman, allegory, clothed female, naked male, Venus, Cupid
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