Venus with the Organ Player

In 1550 Titian crossed the Alps for his second stay at the court of Charles V in Augsburg, and the Berlin museum dates this canvas to the months after he came home in 1551. He and his workshop painted one idea several times for different clients, a reclining Venus with a musician at her feet. Here Venus lies on dark-red velvet under a transparent veil, with a pearl earring, a gold chain and bracelets. Cupid presses against her cheek with a hand on her breast, while her eyes slide down and away from him. The organist, in a dark-red velvet doublet, is seen from the back, twisted round on his bench so far that neither his hands nor the keyboard are visible, and her bare right foot rests against his thigh. In the two versions in the Prado in Madrid, the organist is actually playing. The British art historian Charles Hope judged the Berlin canvas weak workshop work. The museum answers with its quality and with the changes of mind still visible in the organist's figure. Down in the right corner, a shaggy white lapdog looks straight out of the picture.