Venus and the Lute Player

This is very late Titian, painted when he was an old man in Venice and running a busy workshop. He returned to this subject again and again. Venus reclining while a well-dressed young man breaks off his lute playing to gaze at her, and Cupid reaches in to crown her with flowers. Look at the landscape behind them, brushed in fast and free. That loose handling is the old master's own hand. The rest tells a stranger story. The picture was probably still unfinished when Titian died in 1576, and other hands went back in afterward to bring Venus's face and fingers to a smoother finish. He had by then been painting for the better part of 60 years.