Venus (?)

The question mark in the title is honest. We do not really know whether this reclining woman is meant to be Venus or simply a nude, and she carries none of the goddess's usual signs. Bernardino Licinio, a painter working in Venice, made her around 1537, in the very years Titian was finishing his Venus of Urbino not far away. Reclining nudes were in demand among Venetian collectors then, sensual pictures for private rooms rather than churches, and painters supplied them without always naming the woman. Licinio was better known for sober portraits and altarpieces, which makes this languid figure something of a departure for him. The picture often goes by the plain Italian title La Nuda, the nude, which quietly sidesteps the whole question of who she is.