The Worship of Venus

This masterpiece would seem to have established the canon of proportion for all artists who have studied children ~ Charles Ricketts

The Worship of Venus is an oil on canvas painting by the Italian artist Titian completed between 1518 and 1519, housed at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. It describes a Roman rite of worship conducted in honour of the goddess Venus each 1 April.

Quotes

• In the "Worship of Venus" Titian adhered closely to the text of Philostratus. We find here group for group just as described. To the right the lofty marble statue of Venus to whom two nymphs are doing homage, one with the action of a bacchante, a wreath of flowers in her fair hair, in features resembling the shepherd maiden in the "Three Ages"; the other more serious, with pretty gentle features, both of that exuberant style of beauty to be found in the women of the half-length pictures. They are offering oblations to the goddess. At her feet we see the gayest, busiest throng. Hundreds of naked winged children, playing merrily together, loading baskets with the apples they have plucked from the large trees, pelting each other with the fruit or stamping on it with their little feet. Here one is taking aim at another with his bow, one climbs on the back of another and bites his ear, others roll on the ground or play with a hare who is anxiously striving to escape from their clutches. There a couple are embracing each other, and one is lifting laboriously a basket on to his back, as an offering for the goddess. Far off in the distance a ring of merry children are singing and dancing. Jubilant sounds from many little throats rise up among the thick trees and fill the broad meadow-land.
• It was fortunate for Titian that the theme suggested to him by others fitted in with what was then already occupying him in his art. In the "Assumption" he had been painting children's figures for the first time in great numbers and had felt inspired by the charm of their undeveloped forms and innocent unconscious movements. Now it was open to him, in fact it was imposed on him by the task set him, to represent children in active motion. Primitive art may succeed in reproducing the seriousness of manhood, it is reserved for a riper period to present the roguish loveliness of childhood.
  • Georg Gronau, Titian (1904), pp. 55–56.

• The 'Garden of Loves' has been over-cleaned, the sky and statue repainted; for the rest it is luminous and brilliant in pitch, highly wrought, and with the colour scheme and local colours well defined. Technically it continues the blond, fresh method inaugurated in the 'Three Ages of Man.' The blue of the sky is carried throughout the design in the blue wings of the cupids. The brightly coloured draperies on the ground, the baskets decked with jewels, the tiny flowers, the grass and fruit, every portion of the work reveals the highest and most delicate finish, the most tender care. This masterpiece would seem to have established the canon of proportion for all artists who have studied children; it has been copied and imitated by Rubens, Poussin, and il Fiammingo.
  • Charles Ricketts, Titian (1910), p. 57.