Sleeping Venus (Giorgione)

Sleeping Venus
Italian: Venere dormiente
Artist	Giorgione, Titian
Year	c. 1510
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	108.5 cm × 175 cm (42.7 in × 69 in)
Location	Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

The Sleeping Venus (Italian: Venere dormiente), also known as the Dresden Venus (Venere di Dresda), is a painting traditionally attributed to the Italian Renaissance painter Giorgione, although it has long been widely thought that Titian completed it after Giorgione's death in 1510. The landscape and sky are generally accepted to be mainly by Titian.^[1] In the 21st century, much scholarly opinion has shifted further, to see the nude figure of Venus as also painted by Titian, leaving Giorgione's contribution uncertain.^[2] It is in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. After World War II, the painting was briefly in possession of the Soviet Union.

The painting, one of the last works by Giorgione (if it is), portrays a nude woman whose profile seems to echo the rolling contours of the hills in the background. It is the first known reclining nude in Western painting, and together with the Pastoral Concert (Louvre), another painting disputed between Titian and Giorgione,^[3] it established "the genre of erotic mythological pastoral",^[4] with female nudes in a landscape, accompanied in that case by clothed males.^[5] A single nude woman in any position was an unusual subject for a large painting at this date, although it was to become popular for centuries afterwards, as "the reclining female nude became a distinctive feature of Venetian painting".^[6]

There was originally a sitting figure of Cupid beside Venus's feet, which was overpainted in the 19th century.^[7] In addition, in the course of painting, the landscape was changed at both sides, as was the colouring of the drapery, and the head of Venus was originally seen in profile, making it very similar to Titian's later Pardo Venus.^[8] Through a series of x-rays in the 20th century, researchers were able to determine conclusively that this painting had contained different elements that were painted over.^[9] The reasons for these later changes are still unknown, although they could have been suggested by the commissioner of the work.^[9]