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Lot Essay
The compositional elements of the present painting, with its prominent breast-like forms on the left and the subtle horizontal line behind them, serve almost as a symbol for the most infamous of female nudes in Western art. The distribution of these pictorial components recalls the reclining bodies found in both Manet's Olympia and Titian's Venus of Urbino. As this present painting's inscription indicates, this work was inspired by Titian's image of Venus in the Franchetti Collection in Venice.
The present work is one of two paintings with same title and similar compositions, both executed in 1963. These works reiterate Twombly's references to art-historical sources. At the same time, their subject matter and style also relates them to a series of roughly contemporaneous works which convey his renewed interest in Italian and Roman history, as well as ancient mythology. These compositions are often characterized by generally barren spaces.
The present painting is an undeniably compelling work, composed of relatively isolated arrays of pigment applied by hand, which seem to temper the scattered gestures and frenetic exigency in Twombly's earlier works. The white area, only subtly tinted with red and blue striations, becomes less an existential ponderance and more a visually seductive medium, enticing in its forceful tactility and provocative in corporeal suggestion, the only tangible allusion to the goddess' erotic potential.
(fig. 1) Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, Dresden, Gemaldegalerie.
The present work is one of two paintings with same title and similar compositions, both executed in 1963. These works reiterate Twombly's references to art-historical sources. At the same time, their subject matter and style also relates them to a series of roughly contemporaneous works which convey his renewed interest in Italian and Roman history, as well as ancient mythology. These compositions are often characterized by generally barren spaces.
The present painting is an undeniably compelling work, composed of relatively isolated arrays of pigment applied by hand, which seem to temper the scattered gestures and frenetic exigency in Twombly's earlier works. The white area, only subtly tinted with red and blue striations, becomes less an existential ponderance and more a visually seductive medium, enticing in its forceful tactility and provocative in corporeal suggestion, the only tangible allusion to the goddess' erotic potential.
(fig. 1) Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, Dresden, Gemaldegalerie.