Venus with Cupid

Titian's Venus with Cupid from around 1550, now in the Uffizi Gallery, belongs to the extended series of mother-and-son mythological compositions that run throughout his career from the very early examples in the Wallace Collection to these late, more freely brushed variations. The relationship between Venus and Cupid — the goddess of love and the personification of desire she has produced and whom she both guides and is guided by — was philosophically rich in neo-Platonic terms: Venus represents the rational, selective principle of love; Cupid the instinctive, universal force. Their combination in a single composition thus posed the question of the relationship between these two aspects of Eros, a question that Renaissance humanists had debated in terms derived from Plato's Symposium and developed by Ficino. The Uffizi's holding of this late work places it in Florence's primary museum alongside the great early Titians in the collection — the Venus of Urbino, the portraits of the Medici clients — allowing the full arc of his career to be appreciated.

Titian's late style is evident in the rich, warm flesh tones built up through successive glazes, with the loose brushwork and golden tonality that characterize his mature Venetian colorism.