Sleeping Venus by is painted by the High Renaissance painter Giorgione.
Giorgione started painting it in just before he died in 1510 and it remained unfinished until Titian found it and completed it. Therefore many accredit both Giorgione and Titan as makers of the painting.
It features the goddess Venus reclining on the ground beneath a tree and. She is the goddess of love, beauty and fertility, and has been the subject for painters from the ancient Romans and Greeks and onwards. She is depicted as if asleep and unaware that someone is looking at her. This is one of the first paintings where a woman is the main focus and only subject.
Olympia is an painting painted by Eduard Manet in 1863. The painting was inspired by Titian's Venus of Urbino, which in turn refers to Giorgione's Sleeping Venus.
It was first exhibited in 1863 in Paris Salon, France, and sparked so much controversy that it is said that it had to be moved to a less obvious location in the exhibition. Viewers saw the oil painting as ‘immoral’ and ‘vulgar’, not because Olympia was naked, but because of her confrontational gaze and numerous details identifying her as a courtesan, a high class prostitute.
Comparing the two paintings, the naked women are depicted in very similar poses, both stretched out on a blanket or cushion of some sort. Venus is asleep and appears to be unaware of the fact that she’s being looked at, whereas Olympia meets the viewer’s gaze directly and has raised her head from the cushion as if to get a better look at us. Her hand is also placed protectively above her crotch, which by the time was seen as vulgar. Venus, on the other hand, has positioned one arm around her belly, and the other one above her head in a very unnatural pose, almost as if she’s inviting us to look at her body, which makes the image more seductive. The fact that she’s asleep also means that the viewer can watch her without the awkwardness of having to face her gaze.
The idyllic setting emphasizes the fact that she is a mythical and idealized character, which makes her nakedness tolerable. In contrast, the details in the painting of Olympia (her bracelet, earrings, the orchid in her hair) identifies her as a high class prostitute, and as a real person rather than a generalized image of beauty. Olympia is also wearing slippers, indicating that she had clothes but took them off, as opposed to Venus who is naked by nature.
Sleeping Venus was one of the first paintings to have a naked woman as its main subject but there is another work of naked women that can be compared with two researched above areTitian’s painting ‘Venus of Urbino’ (1538).
A visual comparison of Titian’s work with Giorgione’s ‘Sleeping Venus’ makes it clear that Titian borrowed and visually quoted from Giorgione. From the neck down to the hips both artists Venus are the same. Also the faces are similar and poses are the same. The similarities, however, end there. Giorgione depicts Venus in the countryside, laying on the ground, with a crumpled sheet and two red pillows beneath her arm and and head that in this case is more similar to the representation of Venus in the painting by Manet.
Moreover, the painting by Spaniard Diego Velazequez is worth to look at. He had a different approach of Venus painting, it reflects the influence of reclining Venuses by Giorgione and Manet. This influence could easily be seen if one could take Valezequez’s Venus and turn her around. Basically the same general pose of Venus, with one leg tucked under the other, with Venus body fully exposed, however, turning her around he avoids Venus vulva to public view. He showed Venus on the side of modesty, by showing only the face of the model in the mirror.
To sum up; The two paintings one idealised, one realised; shows different ways of female representation.
Olypmia is a painting from 1863. In that time women had very little power, and one way they exerted what little control they could was by controlling the supply of sex, by making it available only with the precondition that it would lead to procreation, and therefore a respectable life as a mother and the support of a husband and community. She depicts a sexually attainable subject by virtue of its presentation. But on one hand she is clearly represented as a human.
Colors and style of painting are even more realistic than in the Venus, so that the viewer assumes that this is a representation of a scene from the real world.
While the Venus encourages the fetishism of motherhood and procreation. Vensus is emphatically a goddess and depicted as goddess-like. Her body whose gentle curves echo the hill of the landscape behind and suggest some form of connection between the female depicted and nature.
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