Sleeping Venus

painting by Giorgione

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July 13, 2026

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The Sleeping Venus is an oil painting completed around 1510 by the Italian Renaissance artist Giorgione. It depicts the goddess Venus reclining nude, a pose that established a standard for reclining nudes in Venetian art. Giorgione began the painting, but it was left unfinished at his death and the landscape background was completed by Titian.12

This work is considered a significant piece in the tradition of Venetian painting, influencing later artists like Titian, whose Venus of Urbino shares thematic and compositional similarities. The Sleeping Venus is celebrated for its expression of remote, unselfconscious beauty and its idealized conception of the figure.231

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Titian
Early life and works
…landscape background to Giorgione’s unfinished Sleeping Venus, a fact recorded by a contemporary writer, Marcantonio Michiel. Still Giorgionesque is the somewhat more lush setting of Titian’s Baptism of Christ (c. 1515), in which the donor, Giovanni Ram, appears at the lower right.
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…landscape background to Giorgione’s unfinished Sleeping Venus, a fact recorded by a contemporary writer, Marcantonio Michiel. Still Giorgionesque is the somewhat more lush setting of Titian’s Baptism of Christ (c. 1515), in which the donor, Giovanni Ram, appears at the lower right.
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Giorgione
Works
The Sleeping Venus (c. 1510) was left unfinished at Giorgione’s death. Michiel stated that the task of adding the landscape background fell to Titian. The picture itself validates this statement, for the landscape, with buildings in the right distance, is repeated in other works by Titian.…
Read More
The Sleeping Venus (c. 1510) was left unfinished at Giorgione’s death. Michiel stated that the task of adding the landscape background fell to Titian. The picture itself validates this statement, for the landscape, with buildings in the right distance, is repeated in other works by Titian.…
Read More