- Sacred and Profane Love
:"This article is on the painting. There is also a novel of this name by
Arnold Bennett ."Infobox Painting|
image_size=400px
title=Sacred and Profane Love
artist=Titian
year=c.1513 -1514
type=Oil on canvas
height=118
width=279
city=Rome
museum=Galleria Borghese "Sacred and Profane Love" (also called "Venus and the Bride") is an
oil painting byTitian , painted around 1513-1514.The painting was commissioned by Niccolò Aurelio, a secretary to the VenetianCouncil of Ten (so identified because hiscoat of arms appears on thesarcophagus or fountain in the centre of the image) to celebrate his marriage to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. It depicts the bride dressed in white sitting besideCupid and being assisted by Venus in person. The figure with the vase of jewels symbolizes "fleeting happiness on earth"; and the one bearing the burning flame of God's love symbolizes "eternal happiness in heaven".The first record of the work under its popular title is in an inventory of 1693, although scholars now discredit the theory that the two female figures are personifications of the
Neoplatonic concepts ofsacred and profane love. The art historianWalter Friedländer outlined similarities between the painting andFrancesco Colonna 's "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili " and proposed that the two figures represented Polia and Venere, the two female characters in the 1499 romance. It has been suggested that the scholarPietro Bembo devised the allegorical scheme.The work was bought in 1608 by the art patron
Scipione Borghese and is currently housed with other works from theBorghese collection in theGalleria Borghese in Rome. In 1899, the Rothchilds' offer to buy the work from the gallery for 4 millionLira (greater than the whole Galleria Borghese building and collections, then valued at 3,600,000 Lira) was refused.References
*cite book|last=Jaffé|first=David|coauthors=et al.|year=2003|title=Titian|location=London|publisher= National Gallery Company
*cite book|last=Moreno|first=Paolo|coauthors=et al.|year=2001|title=The Borghese Gallery|location=Milan|publisher=Touring Club ItalianoExternal links
* [http://www.galleriaborghese.it/borghese/en/eamor.htm Galleria Borghese page]
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