Venus Disrobing, c.1575-1600 (oil on canvas)

Venus is shown at three-quarter-length, seated facing the left. With her head turned to the spectator and her arms raised, she is removing her chemise to reveal her nude body. A curtain is draped behind her to the right. The picture is clumsy in parts, particularly Venus’s right arm, and is most unlikely to be a product of Titian’s workshop or a precise copy after a lost picture by him. However, a similar action was performed in a ‘Venus’ seen by Van Dyck in Venice c. 1622-3. Van Dyck’s sketch was inscribed ‘Titian’ and was made on the same sheet as one after the ‘Venus with an Organist’ now in Madrid (but then in the collection of Francesco Assonica in Venice, according to Ridolfi). It therefore seems like that this painting derives from a picture, probably made in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, by an artist whose connection with Titian had not been direct.