a darker and less well-preserved picture than its present companion, but
a grander if a more audacious presentment of the love-goddess. Yet even
here she is not so much the Cytherean as an embodiment of the Venetian
ideal of the later time, an exemplification of the undisguised worship
of fleshly loveliness which then existed in Venice. It has been pointed
out that the later Venus has the features of Titian's fair daughter
Lavinia, and this is no doubt to a certain extent true. The goddesses,
nymphs, and women of this time bear a sort of general family resemblance
to her and to each other. This piece illustrates the preferred type of
Titian's old age, as the _Vanitas, Herodias_, and _Flora_ illustrate the
preferred type of his youth; as the paintings which we have learnt to
associate with the Duchess of Urbino illustrate that of his middle time.
The dignity and rhythmic outline of Eros in the _Danaë_ of Naples have
been given up in favour of a more naturalistic conception of the
insinuating urchin, who is in this _Venus and Cupid_ the successor of
those much earlier _amorini_ in the _Worship of Venus_ at Madrid. The
landscape in its sweeping breadth is very characteristic of the late
time, and would give good reason for placing the picture later than it
here appears. The difficulty is this. The _Venus with the Organ
Player_[39] of Madrid, which in many essential points is an inferior
repetition of the later _Venus_ of the Tribuna, contains the portrait of
Ottavio Farnese, much as we see him in the unfinished group painted, as
has been recorded, at Rome in 1546. This being the case, it is not easy
to place the _Venus and Cupid_, or its subsequent adaptation, much later
than just before the journey to Augsburg. The _Venus with the Organ
Player_ has been overrated; there are things in this canvas which we
cannot without offence to Titian ascribe to his own brush. Among these
are the tiresome, formal landscape, the wooden little dog petted by
Venus, and perhaps some other passages. The goddess herself and the
amorous Ottavio, though this last is not a very striking or successful