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Episode 14: Venus of Urbino by Titian
Italian Masterpieces Rebuilding the Renaissance
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11m
Titian was the greatest painter from Renaissance Venice. His reputation and achievements in 16th-century Europe were rivaled only by those of Michelangelo. Venetian artists would introduce their own particular style and vision into Renaissance art, as can be seen in the Venus of Urbino. Suddenly, female nudity and eroticism exploded onto the scene in what I like to call a form of soft-core Renaissance pornography. This lecture will explore how there is little “Venus” in the Venus of Urbino, but instead a rather straight-forward visual voyeurism between subject and object. This lecture will also insert this typology of painting into the larger milieu of Renaissance Venice.