Venus with a Mirror

This Venus has lost her mirror. In the full design, which Titian and his workshop repeated for buyers many times over, a small Cupid holds a looking glass up to the goddess on the right, and she turns to meet her own reflection. This canvas was cut down on that side at some point, so her glance now goes past the carved edge of a piece of furniture and into shadow. What survives is the part a Venetian collector would have lingered over: the skin, the dark fur-lined wrap slipping to her hips, the pearl at her ear, the ring on the hand pressed to her chest and the chain bracelet at her wrist. Its date is still an open question. The Italian state catalogue places it before 1549, while the exhibition in Forlì that borrowed it in 2025 labelled it 1565.