Kagan, J., dissenting
But things were destined not to end there. One of Giorgione’s pupils was Titian, and the former student undertook to riff on his master. The resulting Venus of Urbino is a prototypical example of Renaissance imitatio—the creation of an original work from an existing model. See id., at 8; 1 G. Vasari, Lives of the Artists 31, 444 (G. Bull transl. 1965). You can see the resemblance—but also the difference:
.jpg)
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, oil on canvas
The majority would presumably describe these Renaissance canvases as just “two portraits of reclining nudes painted to sell to patrons.” Cf. ante, at 12–13, 22–23. But wouldn’t that miss something—indeed, everything—about how an artist engaged with a prior work to create new expression and add new value?
And the reuse of past images was far from done. For here is Édouard Manet’s Olympia, now considered a foundational work of artistic modernism, but referring in obvious ways to Titian’s (and back a step, to Giorgione’s) Venus:
