Sacred and Profane Love (also called Venus and the Bride) is an oil painting

Oil painting

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

 by Titian

Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...

, painted around 1513–1514. The painting was commissioned by Niccolò Aurelio, a secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten

Council of Ten

The Council of Ten, or simply the Ten, was, from 1310 to 1797, one of the major governing bodies of the Republic of Venice whose actions were often secretive. Although some sources may indicate that the Council of Ten was generally accepted in Venice, there was some opposition...

 (so identified because his coat of arms

Coat of arms

A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

 appears on the sarcophagus

Sarcophagus

A sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...

 or fountain in the centre of the image) to celebrate his marriage to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. It supposedly depicts the bride dressed in white, sitting beside Cupid

Cupid

In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...

 and being assisted by Venus

Venus (mythology)

Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

 in person.

Analysis

Art critics have made several analyses and interpretations, among them are: Ingenious Love and Satisfied Love; Prudery and Love; the wise and foolish virgins

Parable of the Ten Virgins

The Parable of the Ten Virgins, also known as the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, is one of the well known parables of Jesus. It appears in only one of the Canonical gospels of the New Testament...

; the dressed Aphrodite Pandemos (left) opposite the nude Urania

Urania

Urania was, in Greek mythology, the muse of astronomy. Some accounts list her as the mother of the musician Linus. She is usually depicted with a globe in her left hand. She is able to foretell the future by the arrangement of the stars...

. or that it contains a coded message about Bagarotto's father's innocence. Nadia Gaus notes that while the title might at first lead one to view the left hand woman as the sacred one, further thought leads to the opposite interpretation: the well dressed woman is Profane Love while the nude woman is Sacred Love. The title itself of the painting is uncertain: in 1693 it was listed as (Divine love and Profane love).

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 of sacred and profane

Sacred-profane dichotomy

French sociologist Émile Durkheim considered the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden." In Durkheim's theory, the...

 love. The art historian Walter Friedländer

Walter Friedländer

Walter Ferdinand Friedlaender was a German art historian.Born in Glogau, he was taught art history by Heinrich Wölfflin and others...

 outlined similarities between the painting and Francesco Colonna

Francesco Colonna

Francesco Colonna was an Italian Dominican priest and monk who was credited with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.He lived in Venice, and preached at St. Mark's Cathedral...

's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing...

and proposed that the two figures represented Polia and Venere, the two female characters in the 1499 romance. It has been suggested that the scholar Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo was an Italian scholar, poet, literary theorist, and cardinal. He was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch...

 devised the allegorical scheme.

History

The work was bought in 1608 by the art patron Scipione Borghese

Scipione Borghese

Scipione Borghese was an Italian Cardinal, art collector and patron of the arts. A member of the Borghese family, he was the patron of the painter Caravaggio and the artist Bernini...

 and is currently housed with other works from the Borghese collection

Borghese collection

The Borghese Collection is a collection of Roman sculptures, old masters and modern art collected by the Roman Borghese family, especially Cardinal Scipione Borghese, from the 17th century on. It includes major collections of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, and of ancient Roman art...

 in the Galleria Borghese

Galleria Borghese

The Borghese Gallery is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. It is a building that was from the first integral with its gardens, nowadays considered quite separately by tourists as the Villa Borghese gardens...

 in Rome. In 1899, the Rothschild

Rothschild family

The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...

s' offer to buy the work from the gallery for 4 million lira

Lira

Lira is the name of the monetary unit of a number of countries, as well as the former currency of Italy, Malta, San Marino and the Vatican City and Israel. The term originates from the value of a Troy pound of high purity silver. The libra was the basis of the monetary system of the Roman Empire...

(more than the value of the whole Galleria Borghese building and collections, then valued at 3,600,000 Lira) was refused.