Description
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, it established “the genre of erotic mythological pastoral”, with female nudes in a landscape, accompanied in that case by clothed males. 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”.
Bibliography
Sleeping Venus (Giorgione), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sleeping_Venus_(Giorgione)&oldid=1094533476 (last visited Aug. 10, 2022).
