Amor sacro y amor profano

Two women who look like sisters, perhaps even the same woman, sit at either end of an old stone trough, one richly dressed, one almost naked. For centuries people have asked which is sacred and which is profane, and the answer may surprise you.

The story behind the painting

Titian probably painted this picture in 1514, early in his career. It is presumed to have been commissioned by Niccolò Aurelio, a secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten, whose coat of arms appears on the stone trough, to celebrate his marriage to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. The famous title came much later: it is first recorded in 1693, in an inventory listing it as Divine Love and Profane Love, and it may not reflect the original idea at all. In 1608 the painting was bought by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and a major collector. It is still in the Galleria Borghese in Rome.

What to look for

Two women, apparently modelled on the same person, sit on a carved trough made to look like an ancient Roman sarcophagus. Water leaves through a brass spout between them. The woman on the left is fully and richly dressed, in clothes now usually recognised as a bride's, with myrtle in her hair, a plant sacred to Venus and worn by brides. The woman on the right is nude but for a white cloth and a red mantle, holding up a vessel with smoke rising, probably an incense burner. Between them a small winged boy, perhaps Cupid, splashes his hand in the water. Behind them, the landscape climbs to a fortified town on the left and falls away to a village with a church on the right.

Meaning and intent

Here scholars disagree, and the source is honest about it. Most recent views see the picture as commemorating a marriage, but who the figures are remains disputed. By the 20th century it was widely accepted that, contrary to first impressions, the clothed woman would be profane love and the nude one sacred love. In 1969 Erwin Panofsky proposed that they are twin Venuses, an earthly one dressed and a celestial one nude, which the source calls the most accepted interpretation. Others see the clothed woman as the bride and only the nude as Venus. Walter Friedländer linked the pair to Polia and Venus in the 1499 romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Legacy

The painting shows Titian stepping fully into his own style. Its composition recalls Giorgione, the influential Venetian painter who died young in 1510, yet scholars agree that here there is no confusion between the two: Titian has found clarity and certainty of purpose. Its buildings echo those in his Noli me tangere, probably also of 1514, now in the National Gallery, London. The carved scenes on the trough are still unread, and the source notes that much ink has been spilt over the painting's meaning. That openness is part of its pull. More than five centuries on, visitors to the Borghese still stand between the two women and wonder.