Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, 1510

The first thing you'll notice is, "She's nude." Giorgione's painting places the female figure at the center, making it the main focus of the painting. He was one of the first artists to portray this style of subject and has been claimed to be one of the starting points of Modern Art. While we see a bare body, Venus exposed in the open, the painting automatically carries a sense of sexuality with it. But that does not make it dirty in anyway.

What Giorgione has captured is the beauty of the female form, where artists before him in many cases failed to understand what women actually look like. Renaissance artists often painted women with the characteristics of muscular men and an absence of breasts (See anything by Michaelangelo). Giorgione uses line in such a way that Venus' body rolls with the landscape. The hills are layered, flowing in a rhythm, which Venus flows along with. Richard Brafford said, "He has taken this subject seriously and for the first time the female nude is painted poetry with a new visual language."

 Sleeping Venus Sleeping Venus (or Reclining Venus) has been depicted several times by numerous artistic legends such as Titian, Goya, Velazquez, and Manet. Giorgione's was the first. Unfortunately, Giorgione was unable to complete the masterpiece because he died before completion. Titian, who was a close friend,  finished it and later completed his own version of it. The interesting idea behind Sleeping Venus is while it was the last masterpiece to Giorgione, it also marked a new beginning to the world of Art.