History and collaboration: The Widener Orpheus: Faunus and the Venus Marina. 1. The origin of the Sacred and Profane Love. 2. Collaboration in Giorgione's Orpheus and in the oeuvre of Giorgione. Geometry: Venus and the Pentagram. 4. Mythology: The allegory of Venus Marina (the sea born).

1. The origin of the Sacred and Profane Love and the likely development through collaboration passing from Giovanni Bellini to Giorgione, and finally Titian. Allows Giorgione the major iconographic authorship & Titian the final plastic authorship (this includes the final editing of the zodiacal symbols). A brief overview of the Sacred and Profane Love's programme is presented.

2. Collaboration in Giorgione's Orpheus and in the oeuvre of Giorgione: The Conch shell was first published here in 2012 as 'Musings on the Widner Orpheus' and is pretty much as it was delivered, The aim of that post was to expand upon the late Wendy Stedman Sheard's hypothesis of collaboration within Giorgione's Orpheus (known as the 'Widener' Orpheus) and argue that the Sacred and Profane Love is arguably the missing 'una nocte' and the result of a collaboration begun in the studio of Bellini. Stedman Sheard's essay also presented an opportunity to introduce the myth of Venus Marina as the point or 'lesson' of the Orpheus.

3. Mythology: The allegory of Venus Marina (the sea born).The association of the Roman Venus with geometric astronomy and the later distinction between the Roman Venus and the sea-born myth of the Greek Aphrodite,

Section 1. Collaboration: The origin of the Widener Orpheus reflective of the origins of the Sacred and Profane Love. Giorgione implicated.

Fig 1. Orpheus, School of Giovanni Bellini, c.1515. National Gallery of Art Washington.

The late Wendy Stedman Sheard co-edited a collection of articles published as Collaboration in Renaissance Art (1978). In the preface to this collection on collaboration between artists of the renaissance Sheard suggests that collaborative possibilities surround the Widener Orpheus:

"...I have studied a greater and lesser master at work on the Widener Orpheus. This small painting, which was never completely finished, nevertheless bears a frequency noticed yet unanalysed stamp of significance in the ferment of change that characterized Venetian art at the turn of the century (1490s). By locating the composition in a type sequence and exploring the picture's tight integration of visual means, psychological effects, and intellectual structure, I argue that Giorgione authored its conceptual and pictorial inventions, leaving their execution largely to a collaborator during a time when both belonged to Bellini's shop."

Sheards collection of essays pursue the idea that the renaissance period was instead a far more collaborative environment than previously thought by renaissance historians. In this similar spirit the Sacred and Profane Love was likely born through an invenzione given to Giovanni Bellini on the behalf of Isabella d'Este in 1506. The invenzione set out the framework which was to be the foundation of a nativity - keeping in mind a 'nativity' could also be termed a 'night' - but which was in every probability the graphic plan for the painting now known as the Sacred and Profane Love. 

 Fig 2. Orpheus, (Detail). School of Giovanni Bellini National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection.

Sheard chose as an example of collaboration, the painting known as Orpheus (Fig. 4.) (at the time attributed to Giorgione) and which now forms part of the Widener collection at the NGA, Washington, DC. Sheard explains her reasoning behind the selection of the Orpheus:

"...a collaboration between at least two painters seems feasible to postulate, given numerous differences in the proportions, extremities, and modelling employed in the two figure groups...".

Sheard also discusses the possibility that an invenzione, by studying its cohesive structure, might be separated from its end result and agrees that the painting has technical strengths and flaws which can be detected and therefore isolated all which appears to reinforce the collaborative theory:

"George Martin Richter long ago separated the invention of the Orpheus from its execution, maintaining that its invention ought to be attributed to Giorgione while still in Bellini's studio." p.190  Sheard W.S. The Widener Orpheus: Attribution, type, Invention. Collaboration in Renaissance Art.

Sheard supports this hypothesis and draws stylistic parallels between an 'interest in poses..' which specifically reference the torsion implicit in the pose of Orpheus and ascribes this feature to be evident in the frescoes on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Sheard writes:

'The foreground nude's head and the satyr's are shaped quite differently from Orpheus's. They are closer to idealized ovoid's, and their hands, small, broad and limp, are more typically Giorgionesque. Somewhat differently conceived, the rather angular contour describing Circe may depend on a figure from antique relief sculpture, probably a nereid. Though perhaps somewhat awkwardly rendered, the extreme nature of this figure's torsion is remarkable, and indicates that the interest in poses in which animated balance is attained in part by contrasts in the positioning of limbs, so evident in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi frescoes, stemmed from the very earliest phases of Giorgione's brief career, when the Orpheus was designed.' pp. 190-91 Collaboration. Ibid

It is valuable to consider that just as it is possible that if indeed Giorgione played a leading hand in the development of the Orpheus, it also allows the great possibility that Sacred and Profane Love had also been a collaboration. This general theme of collaboration during the Renaissance implies through Sheard's considered analysis that like many artists of the Renaissance, Giorgione was sympathetic to collaboration in the workshop environment:

"I argue that Giorgione authored its conceptual and pictorial inventions, leaving their execution largely to a collaborator during a time when both belonged to Giovanni Bellini's shop." p. xviii (Preface) W. Stedman Sheard Collaboration in Italian Renaissance Art.

We know that through the silence (obscurity, brevity) of Giorgione's works [Vasari, Anderson] that Giorgione was  attracted to subject matter that might consider esoteric & pagan themes. Returning to the Orpheus Sheard pushes the envelope further:

"I believe [...by looking closely at the structure of the Orpheus] that the understanding which results may, moreover, offer several clues to the evolution of Giorgione's approach to subject matter. p.190 Collaboration. Ibid.

This is the direction from which this understanding of Sheard's considerations of the Widener Orpheus may hope to gain insight and to suggest strongly that the Sacred and Profane Love is also a collaborative work which, like the Orpheus likely had originally evolved in the studio of Bellini  and then later moved to the studio of ill fated Giorgione. How so? To consider this is to recall a painting referred to as a Night which disappeared from Giorgione's studio after his death in 1510. But what does the title of a Night infer and how can this paintings subject matter be deduced?Author Peter Burke [Tradition and Innovation in Renaissance Italy p.190] cites the instance of  a 'nativity' by Correggio (c.1530) as being alternatively known as a 'Night'. There are (in my analytic deconstruction of the Sacred and Profane Love) several strong indications that this painting is dedicated to the theme of 'night' on several levels, one of those important components being that the paintings invenzione is (strikingly) based on a map of the night sky of the Southern celestial constellations. Still, tracking, synchronizing, and re-evaluating historical events with a possible timeline is also required.

The Sacred and Profane Love (the Night called the 'una nocte' & 'notte') was most likely begun by Bellini, because it was Bellini whom Isabella's merchant initially approached in 1506. After Giorgione's death in 1510, Isabella d'Este sent her merchant to recover a 'night' from Giorgione's studio:

'We are informed that among the stuff and effects of the painter Zorzo (Giorgione) of Castelfranco there exists a picture of a night (una nocte) very beautiful and singular; if so it might be we desire to possess it...' Peter Burke p.134. 

Clearly, the 'night' was at or at least near a stage of resolution to be called 'singular and beautiful. Whomsoever informed Isabella is postulated elsewhere on this site, suffice it to recall here the dissatisfaction of Giovanni Bellini with the rigidity of an invenzione supplied to him on Isabella's behalf. 

Looking to the complex graphic programme (invenzione) that form the basis for the Sacred and Profane Love, and being aware of certain hermetic and alchemical themes, one might conjecture that Bellini was also concerned with losing his prestigious title of 'Painter to the City of Venice' bestowed on him by the Venetian Council of Ten. Because in 1488 that same body to which Niccolo Aurelio was a secretary had outlawed the practice of alchemy so perhaps for Bellini the task was too great a professional risk. It is known through the recorded applications to the Council of Ten that there was a protracted bitterness between the two artists; Bellini was aware that Titian appears to have been circling his aging prey the painting is not strictly alchemical. Still, there are certainly enough references to form an accusation should any rival have desired to be troublesome. One would certainly be on one's toes so to speak.

It is also extremely possible that Isabella had never seen the programme and was merely forwarding the invenzione on the behalf of her brother Alfonso (the subsequent plan as a map including a star map of the South Celestial Hemisphere seems to intimate political intrigue and Alfonso d'Este - this is covered in a post on The New World). Now enter Giorgione who has taken Bellini's 'Night'  to near resolution and which was - after Giorgione's death in 1510 - hidden and finished by the ambitious young Titian. 

This is to suggest of the Sacred and Profane Love that there were three collaborators - Bellini, Giorgione and Titian - and in that order. This painting now known as the Sacred and Profane Love is presumed to have been executed around 1514 based on the wedding date of Niccolo Aurelio whose coat~of~arms appears on the front of the sarcophagus/fountain. But the date of the paintings collaborative beginnings must reasonably start from the date where Bellini received the invenzione from Isabella's merchant. Perhaps the date of the paintings 'resurfacing' after the death of old Giovanni Bellini - the last of the collaborators who shared the intimate knowledge of the paintings shrouded history and the last who could have challenged Titian. With both Giorgione and now Bellini gone, Titian is free to claim Bellini's title of painter to Venice and either add or rework the coat~of~arms for Aurelio. 

For what remains of the original programme refer to the post on the Zodiacal Metaphors on this site and note the plan of the ceiling of the Sala dei Venti in the Palazzo del Te, Mantua. Titian handed - in part only - the original invenzione to Giulio Romano for the design of that ceiling, and the structural steps of both the Sacred and Profane Love and the ceiling of the Sala dei Venti are traceable through analysis. Because of this last fact Titian has left a trail for which he can be taken to task.

Section 2. Collaboration in Giorgione's Orpheus repeats in the oeuvre of Giorgione: The Conch shell.

In Giorgione's Orpheus Sheard identifies the satyr as Pan, and the female as [a form of] Venus pudica. The term pudica refers to the classical pose where the hand of Venus covers her pudenda and breasts to suggest modesty, but this is an attitude; a pose, and not a myth in itself, and therefore this as an attribution is challengeable because Venus is sitting in the midst of a wood and not emerging from her bath. In the Orpheus, Venus is only technically in the pudica pose because the breasts are 'censored' by the arm of Faunus reaching across the young Venus to present the conch shell to her view. This pictorial play is rather clever and relies on a graphic technicality when reduced to the two points critical to the terms of the pudica motif; the breasts and pudenda must be covered. Pictorially Giorgione has achieved this albeit unconventionally - clever graphic manipulation of the terms of that motif. 

This essay also suggests that Pan should be substituted for Faunus. Likened to the Greek Pan, Faunus was the Roman god of the woods and forests, historically a former King of Latium who seems to have died peacefully old. (Raised to the level of deity after his death he was considered to have been the husband of the Bona Mater.) Faunus appears as a mixture of the historical personage of the king of Latium and mythologically exalted to aquire the character of Roman god of the woods and forests (Faunus, as a deity, originated in Italy itself. As such Faunus was one of the di indigetes, or native deities.). Giorgione has portrayed Faunus as a mixture of an aged man of regal countenance with the hinds of a goat - without horns. Of Faunus, the classicist John Lempriere wrote:

"Faunus... reigned  in Italy about 1300 years B.C. He raised a temple in honour of the god Pan called by the Latins Lupercus... 

[Also see my post on the Lupercalia as being relevant to the reliefs on the fountain/sarcophagus of the Sacred and Profane Love]

Venus must - due to the presence of the conch shell - become associated with the myth of the Venus Marina. Similar cultural identifications/issues will be found in Botticelli's Birth of Venus where the Venus Marina is also present in the pudica pose, and yet the presence of the scallop shell introduces her as a form of the Greek Aphrodite.

But from here the argument shall be presented that by focusing on the motifs of the Venus of Giorgione's Orpheus (for it is certainly her in the debatable pudica attitude) and in proximity of the conch shell and by drawing meaning from Faunus's inclusion in this enigmatic drama, this analysis may help to understand Giorgione's approach to the often obscure subject matter of several of his works.

Finally, the subject matter that defines the Orpheus will be compared with Botticelli's Birth of Venus; the object held in the hand of the satyr of the Orpheus is the pivot upon which meaning is revealed. 

 Fig 3. Orpheus, (Detail).

Sheard claims the object held by Pan [Faunus] to be a conch (Fig 5) and she is most certainly correct and further, Sheard has completely grasped the meaning represented by this mythological pair:

"...the pair represents the male and female principles of nature, the dichotomy of their sexual difference - a primal one, after all, in the human perception of the world and indeed of the cosmos - now fused by union in a shared rapturous experience which is a visual equivalent of their essential primordial unity beneath the world of appearances." W. Stedman Sheard. Collaboration in Renaissance Art. p.196.

What Giorgione is indicating by Faunus presenting the conch shell to (a budding) Venus is that the shells outward appearance' recalls the cleft form of the pudenda. This association is a very particular motif of the sea-born myth that recalls the Venus Marina and refers to that area of the female anatomy which reflects the matrix and archetypal form of the goddess; the form of her primary sexual differentiation. The conch is the metaphoric link to the pudenda/vulva and the associated properties reflected in nature - water, salinity, fecundity. The vulva then is linked to this divine form unique in nature and to which these multiple associations are attributed the wondrous cause of her power over men.

In the Widener Orpheus it is the metaphor of the conch shell which links the myth to the physical and so confirms a point of intersectionality between the physical relationship (conch/vulva) the mythological/philosophical relationship (the sea-birth of Venus) and at a deeper level, the alchemical relationship of Venus to water (in all philosophical alchemy she will become the 'moist radical').

The Sheard essay notes a narrative/anti-narrative argument which suggests that this painting illustrates a story from classical mythology, which might have steered attribution away from Giorgione as it is known that he was not fond of simply illustrating narratives, but there is no narrative that leaps to mind that might encompass all these players in this setting - and so Sheard's essay suggests to my mind a constructed, obscure complexity. Portrayed here in their archetypal aspects as the twin Venuses it is the myth of Ceres and Proserpine which allows full disclosure of the paintings programme.

The Feminine as Flower: Metaphor and Hermeneutics:

         We are as flowers in a garden hidden from all men's eyes, no 

creature of the field walks in this place,

           no plow divides us; only the gentlest wind, rain from a soft

       warm cloud and the quickening sun to nourish us.

                                                                                           Catullus c. 84-54 BCE

Fig 1. The Sacred and Profane Love. c.1514, Galleria Borghese, Rome. Attributed to Titian.

Here in the Sacred and Profane Love (Fig 1.) can be found the discussion of an ancient Italian religion most accessible through the traditional structures that define the polarities of Eve and Mary. It is Eve who like Proserpine, belongs to the sexual, deflowered, and/or fallen female mythotype. This word  flower is a recurring motif in the language of the feminine as Erich Neumann claimed: 

“The bond between woman and plant can be followed through all stages of human symbolism. The psyche as flower, as lotus, lily, and rose, the virgin as flower in Eleusis, symbolise the flowerlike unfolding of the highest psychic and spiritual developments. Thus birth from the female blossom is an archetypal form of divine birth...”

But in the Sacred and Profane Love, the meaning of the flower is divided between the sacred and the profane.  Life is not only the psyche and its unfolding, so while Neumann's cited take encompasses the psychological, it unfortunately denies the sensual by breezing over this legitimate necessity in favour of a grand spiritual potentiality. When the feminine is referred to and portrayed through the flower metaphor, it often means to reference the vulva as the primary sexual characteristic of the female and/or more broadly, to that creative force which rises from the vivifying power of the body. 

We cannot have Sacred fire without the Profane spark; Ceres without Proserpine; or one Twin Venus without the other. So here, couched in the language of the Sacred and Profane Love is the opportunity to clearly state the difference between the iconology of the flower as (1.) a symbol to describe metaphorically the sensual form of the vulva.  (2.) This is distinct from the endogenous metaphor (the flower unfolded) - the grand spiritual metaphor and symbol of undefiled purity eg., the white lily and lotus. 

John Milton writing in the epic poem Paradise Lost (c.1657) employed both a celestial metaphor (planet & stars) and also flowers as as a carnal reference to emphasise the physicality of a loss, not the least of virginity, but certainly of childhood.

                                               Proserpine, gath'ring

                                               Flowers with friends

                                               Herself a fairer flower,
                                               By gloomy Dis was plucked 

                                                                                  John Milton  Paradise Lost                                         

Dis (Pluto) ravages the picturesque setting and the child/flower is torn and discarded. Because gathering flowers is a childish innocence the metaphor here infers not so much that children are innocent flowers but that children (as is inherently known) are the flowers of innocence itself. Milton is here speaking of Venus on a celestial level (thereby identifying Proserpine as the planet Venus) because he refers to her metaphorically as a celestial entity. Venus appears alone as the bright star [actually a planet but to the naked eye appears as large moving star] set wandering through the celestial fields of the 'fixed stars' who are her companions. Venus glides across the starry fields of the night sky.  

Fig 2. Detail; Torn flowers (roses & foliage).

Catullus and Giorgione will be shown to be in dialogue with the ravish metaphors of the torn flower and the ruined rose which are dramatically distinct from those stainless lilies belonging to the Great Mothers of Botticelli or Tintoretto and which as floral symbols represent the idealised psychological and spiritual symbols to which Neumann refers. It could be assumed that Milton's consideration of the rape of Proserpine was likely inspired by a wedding poem written sixteen hundred years earlier by Catullus (c. 84 c.54. BC) when he penned his epithalamium:

                
                                    We are the treasure that many girls and boys desire;
                                      but once deflowered (the flower stained and torn)
                                 the virgin's body rancid, neither boys nor girls will turn to
                                               her again nor can she wake their passion.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Catullus (Trans. H. Gregory ) p. 169

These emblems of the Great Virgins, of Juno (see fig. 12) and of the Madonna (see fig 13) must be associated with the celestial Mother or celestial Venus (Venere Celeste); whereas the opposite pole of the normally physically active sexual life can be associated with Proserpine (Venere Vulgare) and Eve. Between these poles of the sacred (celestial; virginal, psychological, philosophical) and the profane (physical; libidinous, taboo) morality and social mores are constantly being redefined and modulated by acceptable cultural norms.

John Donne, like Giorgione, ushered in the landscape as a simile for the feminine form (a perception that was addressed in the first post ''Finding the Way In' (see Donne's (Elegy XX: On his mistress going to bed). We know that libidinous nature to which Donne refers is pursued through a marital contract and mutual consent, and where there is consent there is no immorality. Donne, extending his range through metaphor can barely contain the sensual revelation of his ecstatic secret: pleasure, gentle suffering, and the potential gain through love of 'psychic and spiritual developments'.

How blest I am in thus discovering thee!

To enter into these bonds, is to be free...

Donne associates the flowers and hills with the feminine, and Giorgione's Sleeping Venus [fig 3] sets the undulating lines of the background to the sensual curves of the female form reclined; again to Donne:

Your gown going off such beauteous state reveals,

As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals.

Combined, both poet and painter display the feminine as curvaceous, fecund, and mystical, but it is also at this point a division in attitude occurs between the youthful Giorgione and the mature husband in Donne. and this is revealed in the metaphor of the flower. Giorgione's flower metaphors were to influence the youthful Titian who would return to employ their language on several occasions. More than fifty years after the Sleeping Venus of Giorgione Titian returns to employ the language of flowers but there were several steps to take which would again present specifically in Titian's Danaë and the Shower of Gold, 1564.

Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (Fig. 3) asserts an immature and indulgent male idea, which is that the feminine is a cornucopia of sensory delight which of itself is passively innocent, incapable of assertion (as a yielding, natural landscape) and therefore the property of the male visual field. That her eyes are closed states that she is not receptive to his presence (he has clearly created her thus) and yet this is not to say that he is unreceptive to her form, rather, this portrayal allows Giorgione (and any other observer) to consider the sensuality of form anonymously and free from confrontation. As is often observed of this work, the lines of the nude participate with the undulations of the landscape.

Fig 3. Giorgione: The Dresden (or Sleeping) Venus c. 1510. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

The youthful Giorgione can be nobly portrayed and defended as a young man discovering that within this primarily visual articulation of life, the sensuality of nature is all-encompassing and essentially feminine yet this does not and should not always lead to sensual gratifications. This work is actually by a young man crossing the threshold to maturity and is a work of philosophical consideration and self restraint.

Fig 4. Dresden Venus (Detail).

In the lower left foreground notice the small flowers. Noticeably Giorgione's Venus (Fig 3.) has not torn any of those tiny flowers that are within her grasp (lower left foreground, Fig 4. Detail) which would - according to the logic of the flower motif found in the oeurves of both Giorgione and Titian - have indicated a sexual union or violation, and Giorgione's Venus remains pure; an untouched and unviolated vision.

Giorgione is at a different level of being to Donne (Giorgione is the seeking student while Donne is the illumined master) but it is through Giorgione's willingness to learn and by methodologically retracing the conceptual and structural pathways of the Sacred and Profane Love, that we are able to walk with him as Dante walked with Virgil. In Giorgione's development, this is the beginning of control - which bonds him to Donne in a deep respect of the feminine and the discovery and exaltation of the goddess.

Reclining Venuses

The Sleeping Venus of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (c.1499, Venice) and of Dresden are clearly most objectified while sleeping and certainly both are objects of the male sexual gaze. Giorgione's Dresden Venus was first designed in oils, reclined, asleep and semi-nude rather than naked.

Fig 5. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili; Nymph and Satyr. Aldine Press, Venice, c.1499. 

Giorgione's sleeping, reclined Venus appears to have had its origin in a woodcut* (Fig. 4) taken from the Francesco Colonna novel The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the same unusual though popular novel from which the Sarcophagus/Fountain of the Sacred and Profane Love was undoubtedly sourced. This commonality declares the influence that the novel had on Giorgione's grand motifs in both the form of the Sleeping Venus (aka Dresden Venus) and the sarcophagus/fountain of the Sacred and Profane Love. 

Fig 6. Giorgione: The Dresden (or Sleeping) Venus c. 1510.

The Woodcut of Nymph and Satyr (Fig. 5) predates the Dresden Venus (Fig. 6) so chronologically it is not difficult to find a progression or source from one to the other (both sleep, are semi-nude,and reclined). In the Dresden Venus, the gaze has shifted from the apparent observation of the leering (in facino erecto) satyr and therefore the viewer of the woodcut is absolved from any associated guilt because he is observing a scenario and only indirectly studying the nude form of Venus. But in Giorgione's Venus the observer casts their gaze directly and self consciously in the first person. This is to say that the major difference between the two (the woodcut and the Dresden Venus) is that the viewer of Giorgione's very sensual painting has become the satyr of the earlier woodcut. But it must also be said that this is not an unnatural or even unappealing situation for a respectful, enamoured male (that is to say; the lover) to desire to consider the naked female form.

In these works, beginning with the woodcut and progressing through to the Sacred and Profane Love (Fig 1.) and the Venus of Urbino (Fig 8), the one continuous motif of Giorgione's is the exposed left leg of the Venus. This motif of Venus becomes an emblem under Giorgione's influence and will be most pronounced in the leg of Ceres in the Sacred and Profane Love where the reason and the likely source of this motif is identified as originating cosmographically.

[*It was common in past ages and as a point of decorum, to censor the erect penis of the satyr and replace the area with a more abstract concept of  facino erecto ].

The Flower Motif (Venere Vulgare):

The Sacred and Profane Love:

The Venus of Urbino:
Danaë and the shower of Gold:

Beginning with the Woodcut of Nymph and Satyr (Fig. 5), and the Sleeping Venus (Fig. 6), the next stage of development is the introduction of  flowers as a metaphor for sexual blossoming and then plucked flowers as the metaphor of sexual de-flowering - the latter being the accepted mythological narrative (the rape of Proserpine) that occurs in the myth of Pluto and Proserpine.

Fig 7. Detail; flower (roses).

The 'loaded' theme of the torn flower metaphor was first developed in oil by Giorgione in the Sacred and Profane Love, and thereafter pursued by Titian in the Venus of Urbino c.1538 (fig. 8). The image of Proserpine seated at the sarcophagus/fountain with the flowers held in her lap by the gloved hand marks a division between these chronologically developing groups and introduces the motif of the torn flower as a sign of ravishment. Of his own initiation Titian employs this flower metaphor in Danaë and the Shower of Gold, c. 1564.

The Venus of Urbino

Fig 8. The Venus of Urbino c.1538. Galleria Degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy

As the flower theme progresses, so does a clear design motif indicating a sexual distinction. Reclined again, the Venus of Urbino (Fig. 8)*, clasps torn roses to indicate sexual consummation. Titian's Venus of Urbino c.1538 is again in dialogue with the Venus Vulgare through flower symbolism - note the torn or fallen roses under the left hand (Fig 9). Taking the lead from the interpretation of the flowers under Proserpine's hand (Fig 7), the Urbino Venus appears post libidinal, uninhibited, and so, naturally unashamed.

Fig 9. Titian's Venus of Urbino c.1538. (Detail).

The surroundings suggest that this scene is domestic. Importantly, this Venus (Vulgare) appears to be invisible to the other women in the room and seemingly luxuriates contentedly in her role as the all consuming goddess of sexual ardour. This Venus appeases the drives of her erotic nature, and is here perhaps indicating that the bed is the source of marital contentment. By her invisible presence she is, in a sense, eroticising the scene of conjugal harmony.

Danaë and the Shower of Gold

The myth of Danaë and the shower of Gold belongs to one of the many deceitful amours of Jupiter, who by turning himself into a shower of gold, seduced the beautiful Danae. From this liaison Danae became the mother of Perseus; slayer of Medusa.

Fig 10. Danaë and the Shower of Gold c. 1564. Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.

In Titian's Danaë and the Shower of Gold (Fig. 10), Danaë is reclined while the roses appear to balance delicately on the beds edge. As the shower of gold falls from the sky, the roses appear to be about to fall; these discarded roses on the verge of falling from the bed indicate the prior moment of Danaë yielding to Jupiter's sexual advances which will result in Danaë's subsequent pregnancy (in this myth myth mother and child (Perseus) are set adrift in a chest which suggests this story is an archetypal myth reminiscent of the Isis & Osiris and Moses myths rather than recalling an historical event.)

Fig 11. Danaë  and the Shower of Gold (Detail) c. 1564.

Danaë will fall pregnant to Jupiter after this liaison and so it is clear from Danaë's subsequent conception that the flower symbolism (Fig. 11, Detail) refers to a sexual violation. Of five paintings on the myth of Danaë and the Shower of Gold by Titian and his workshop the 1564 version (fig 11) is the only one of the five Danaë paintings by Titian where flower symbolism participates in a narrative referring to a theme of sexual violation. 

These paintings; the Sacred and Profane Love; the Venus of Urbino; and Danaë and the Shower of Gold, share the same intent in the metaphor of the flowers, which is to say; the presence of flowers initiated in the work of Giorgione* and later Titian, is distinctly a sexual metaphor.

[There will be an argument presented in a later post that the Sacred and Profane Love was Giorgione's project up until his death in 1510.]

                                                   

Flower of Purity (Venere Celeste)
                                                 

In a broader religious overview the falls of Proserpine and Eve are essentially sexual and therefore human. It is those sexual initiations which have confirmed their falls from reveries in the otherworldly realms and firmly grounded their physicality. They belong to the polarity of Venere Vulgare as a fecund sexual force embodied and are the counterparts to the idealism of the Great Mother or Celestial Virgin.

The cult of the Great Mother/Celestial Virgin finds contemporary expression in the cult of the Virgin Mary who again belongs to the lineage of the ancient and continually metamorphosing Great Mother cult, and this is the religious stream from which Mary - the Great Virgin Mother - directly descends. To the anthropologist Edmund Leach:

“In an objective sense, as distinct from theoretical theology, it is the Virgin Mary, human mother of God, who is the principal object of devotion in the Catholic Church.”

The lily flowers sacred to the Virgin Mary belie her lineage. Looking to the Origin of the Milky Way by Tintoretto, c.1575-1580 (Fig 12). The mythology's narrative tells of the infant Hercules being placed upon the sleeping Juno's breast by Jupiter to be suckled, thereby immortalising the child 

Fig 12. Origin of the Milky Way. Jacopo Tintoretto. c.1575
The National Gallery London.

So voracious a feeder was Hercules and abundant the milk of Juno that droplets spurted across the sky and formed the Milky Way (galaxy). Where each of those droplets fell to earth the Lily Flower was formed which were sacred to the Great Virgin. (The bottom edge of Tintoretto's canvas was water damaged and the painted lilies cut away.) 

                                

                                    

Fig 13. Botticelli. Madonna and Child with Eight Angels c.1465-67.
Spedale degli Innocenti of Florence.

Botticelli's Madonna and Child with Eight Angels c.1465-67 (Fig 13), presents the Great Virgin with Eight Angels holding the lilies sacred to her. Mary's flower motif of white lilies define her as the symbol of purity. Her flower motif accords with Neumann's point of view of the flower as metaphor for the 'flowerlike unfolding of the highest psychic and spiritual developments', and is a parallel to the meaning of the lotus flower of eastern religion.

Nox; Bona dea; Isis; Cybele; Demeter; Venus; and Ceres; these Great Mother cults of ancient Rome, inasmuch as they reference the continuing Italian tradition of the cults of the feminine, are revealed extant in the contemporary guise that defines Mary as the counterpart of Eve.

Meaningful conversation of the Sacred and Profane Love will either be restricted or elucidated through religious considerations to raise the question 'What is religion'? This question is one of the fundamental propositions demanded by the Sacred and Profane Love, and the answer may be that religion is not at all that which we expect religion to be. 

Finally, it remains unclear as to whether the flower motif was the conceptual property of Giorgione or Titian at the point where it becomes obvious in the Sacred and Profane Love, but Giorgione remains the most likely author, and Titian, the follower. There will be further considerations to be made during the course of this investigation which may prove helpful.

* The Venus of Urbino is a painting which intuits to this writer a rework of something wrested from the studio of Giorgione after his death.

This is a reference to the narrative of Proserpine and Ceres as an agricultural myth. Around September at the onset of autumn the crops are reaped. In the constellation of Virgo the major star is Spica, L. Spica, = corn. Ceres (the Celestial Virgin) who as the rising Virgo (Virgin) appears at the time of Proserpine’s disappearance in the September night sky holding Spica - the ear of corn. The reaping of the crops is complete, and in the ensuing winter months the ground will lay barren while the sorrowful Mother searches for her daughter.

This has particular alchemical implications because Proserpine was never the fruit, but rather the (cold) moisture within, which must plump the fruit and bring about its maturity. No plant - or even cut flower - can survive without moisture. Alchemically this has a parallel in the concept of the 'moist radical'. P.

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