_Venus Anadyomene_, or _Venus of
the Shell_, of the Bridgewater Gallery, painted perhaps at the
instigation of some humanist, to realise a description of the
world-famous painting of Apelles. It is not at present possible to place
this picture with anything approaching to chronological exactitude. It
must have been painted some years after the _Bacchus and Ariadne_ of the
National Gallery, some years before the _Venus_ of the Tribuna, and that
is about as near as surmise can get. The type of the goddess in the
Ellesmere picture recalls somewhat the _Ariadne_ in our masterpiece at
the National Gallery, but also, albeit in a less material form, the
_Magdalens_ of a later time. Titian's conception of perfect womanhood is
here midway between his earlier Giorgionesque ideal and the frankly
sensuous yet grand luxuriance of his maturity and old age. He never,
even in the days of youth and Giorgionesque enchantment, penetrated so
far below the surface as did his master and friend Barbarelli. He could
not equal him in giving, with the undisguised physical allurement which
belongs to the true woman, as distinguished from the ideal conception
compounded of womanhood's finest attributes, that sovereignty of amorous
yet of spiritual charm which is its complement and its corrective.[16]
Still with Titian, too, in the earlier years, woman, as presented in the
perfection of mature youth, had, accompanying and elevating her bodily
loveliness, a measure of that higher and nobler feminine attractiveness
which would enable her to meet man on equal terms, nay, actively to
exercise a dominating influence of fascination. In illustration of this
assertion it is only necessary to refer to the draped and the undraped
figure in the _Medea and Venus (Sacred and Profane Love)_ of the
Borghese Gallery, to the _Herodias_ of the Doria Gallery, to the _Flora_
of the Uffizi. Here, even when the beautiful Venetian courtesan is
represented or suggested, what the master gives is less the mere votary
than the priestess of love. Of this power of domination, this feminine
royalty, the _Venus Anadyomene_ still retains a measure, but the _Venus
of Urbino_ and the splendid succession of Venuses and Danaes, goddesses,
nymphs, and heroines belonging to the period of the fullest maturity,
show woman in the phase in which, renouncing her power to enslave, she
is herself reduced to slavery.

These glowing presentments of physical attractiveness embody a lower
ideal-