Venus, Cupid and a Satyr

Paris Bordone had painted this sleeping woman once before. An earlier version, now in the Ca' d'Oro in Venice, has no intruder, and the roses scattered around her and Cupid's quiver make it plain that she is Venus. This later canvas, from the late 1550s or early 1560s, adds the satyr and with him a second story. A sleeping nymph watched by a goat-legged woodland god also recalls Antiope, whom Jupiter approached in that disguise. The detail that pulls it back towards the goddess of love is up in the tree, where he is reaching for an apple. It may recall the golden apple the Trojan prince Paris awarded her. Down by Cupid's foot the painter signed in Latin, bordonus, which did not stop later Borghese inventories from giving the picture to Titian or his school.