Venus of Urbino

Titian was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino to paint a wedding gift to his young bride — a model of marital seduction and fidelity. The naked Venus is the seduction; the sleeping lapdog is the fidelity. In Renaissance iconography a dog at the foot of the bed signals constancy. The painting is a marriage manual. The wife was eleven when she received it. Now at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence @uffizigalleries