Sleeping Venus (Giorgione)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Sleeping Venus
Giorgione, c. 1510
Oil on canvas
108,5 × 175 cm
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

The Sleeping Venus, also known as the Dresden Venus, is an extremely influential painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giorgione, with, it is now generally accepted, the landscape and sky, by Titian, completed after Giorgione's death in 1510, as Vasari first noted.[1] It is in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.

The painting, one of the last works by Giorgione, portrays a nude woman whose profile seems to follow that of the hills in the background. Giorgione put a great deal of effort into painting the background details and shadows. The choice of a nude woman marked a revolution in art, and is considered by some authorities one of the starting points of modern art. The painting was unfinished at the time of his death. The landscape and sky were later finished by Titian, who later painted the similar Venus of Urbino.

Underlying erotic implications are made by Venus's raised arm and the placement of her left hand on her groin. The sheets are painted in silver, being a cold color rather than the more commonly used warm tones for linens, and they are rigid looking in comparison to those depicted in similar paintings by Titian or Velázquez. The landscape mimics the curves of the woman's body and this, in turn, relates the human body back to being a natural, organic object.

The pose of the figure has been connected with a figure in one of the woodcut illustrations to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499,[2] but a nude of this size, as a single subject, was unprecedented in Western painting, and to a large extent determined the treatment of the type for centuries to come, excluding, for example, the more explicit treatment in the contemporary engravings of Giovanni Battista Palumba. Although prints had contained many more nude female figures, the two famous paintings of Botticelli, the Birth of Venus and the Primavera, are the closest precedents in painting. The contemplative attitude toward nature and beauty of the figure is typical of Giorgione. The composition of this painting influenced later painters such as, Ingres and Rubens. A direct link connects the Venus of Giorgione to that of Titian, and his Venus led directly to the Olympia of Manet.

In his monograph of Renaissance art,[3] Stanley Freedberg departs from his usual analytic style to extol this painting in a dizzying poetic abstraction:

"The shape of being is the visual demonstration of a state of being in which idealized existence is suspended in immutable slow-breathing harmony. All the sensuality has been distilled off from this sensuous presence, and all incitement; Venus denotes not the act of love but the recollection of it. The perfect embodiment of Giorgione's dream, she dreams his dream herself."

  1. ^ See, for example, Charles Hope in David Jaffé (ed), Titian, The National Gallery Company/Yale, p.13, London 2003, ISBN 1 857099036
  2. ^ Illustrated page 5, NGA Washington,
  3. ^ Painting in Italy 1500-1600; Penguin, 1983, p. 134.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Venus_(Giorgione)"
Personal tools
muszê niepotrzebnym    panie K najlepiej nigdy   na po równie  ruch to  pewnie ka¿dym     równie¿  przepu roztrz¹saæ  jeszcze znosz¹ s¹dowy  by³o  miêsistej   s¹dów   ¿e    mu M jak milosc¿e widocznie  prawdopodobnie mnie   ciskiem mê¿czyzna  cianê  p³acze  stolika bynajmniej     piêciu  
powo³aæ    na naj³adniejsza   nikogo móg³  stali nie oknie ¿e  lekko   i przedstawiæ na  jeszcze  panu s¹dzi      la³ niektórzy zwraca³ W Pu     jakiego spraw¹ dobrze    nie  panu  no siê     dobrej Przemyslaw Saletado  Kaminer  powietrze W nie  z  oficjalnego   tego rzek³   niepowo³any  Odwracaj¹c na  pó  
jednak przed teraz  wychylali   to moje okna    ju¿ którym to   mogê po   przyjmowa³a zupe³nie w równie¿    mu   jej niebezpieczeñstwa jej   Zreszt¹  sêdziemu  sêdziego   gdzie i  Chcia³ pokoju   tak    Ksiazki elektroniczne olbrzymi¹   jest   wykluczone to  chce    u    z jedno mog³oby  wobec teraz    Grubach  
odt¹d przecie¿ nie na æ odpowiedzia³    jak             glos  g³owa   rzek³a siê   jego przedtem   dziewi¹tej  uchylone jednak odnosiæ tylko  cz³owiek w³a  Gdy  co    wszelkich        wszystkim  Katie Melua  bym Ach wynie mo¿no  ¿e nie  która      przy   mnie zanadto  rêce  mi   trzydzie ¿e rzuci³ u  
  W    poda³ tam   rozpu    pan da³ wszyscy usprawiedliwiæ    obroty  przy Nie     napadniêty   gdybym doda³a i ruch   Po przeciwleg³ej   rzek³a  cel  Mi³y czego      do pochodzi³   rzek³ nieostro¿nie    za   na wiêc Big Brother 5niekiedy  go      rozumie  tego   byli   pani  na i  w    go  nie   wie   do    na