Girl in a Fur

This young woman repeatedly posed for Titian. All the paintings in which she appears, including the famous Venus of Urbino (1538, Florence, Uffizi Galleries), were created for Francesco Maria della Rovere, the nephew of Pope Julius II and Duke of Urbino from 1508, or for his son Guidobaldi. The present work is probably from that same period. The charming, erotically charged appearance of the unknown woman is not to be understood as a portrait: here Titian is celebrating a general concept of beauty, which was enhanced by contemporary lyric poetry under the influence of Petrarch. Along with the revealing posture of the beautiful woman, the main motif is the stimulating combination of fur and skin, an artistic strategy used before Titian by Giorgione in his Laura. The precious fur cloak has slid down the girl’s right shoulder, exposing her breast. She is still holding the cloak to her body with her right hand, but she has made a first beginning. The ambivalence of her posture is based on a classical model: the type of the Venus Pudica resonates in Titian’s painting. The precious jewellery – strings of pearls, ear-rings, bracelet and ring – creates distance and also opens another level of meaning in the picture as a portrait of a Venetian courtesan. In 1630 the painting found a famous admirer: Rubens copied Titian’s work, which was then in English ownership, and later further developed the older artist’s innovation in his own style. From Titian’s comparatively reserved Renaissance portrait, Rubens developed an equally complex Baroque alternative in a full-length portrait of his second wife, Helena Fourment. © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010