Sacred and Profane Love

Sacred and Profane Love (Italian: Amor Sacro e Amor Profano) is an oil painting by Titian, probably painted in 1514, early in his career. It is now in the Galleria Borghese in Rome.

Quotes

 * No one will deny the exquisite charm of his early works. The grace and loveliness of his Madonnas, the brilliancy, the gaiety, the spirit of his mythological pictures, attract us irresistibly. It is easy to explain why of all Titian's works "Sacred and Profane Love" is the most extolled and the most popular, why the "Madonna with the Cherries" or the "Madonna with St. Anthony" are among the favourites of the public.
 * Georg Gronau, Titian (1904), Conclusion, p. 253


 * The 'Sacred and Profane Love' is still in some degree Giorgionesque in mood, but as a design it is more amply spaced, it is mainly in certain details of the landscape that it retains traces of earlier conventions. Compared to Titian's later rendering the foliage is still calligraphic in detail and feathery in its masses, in fact, mere thin spray-forms seen as lace-like silhouettes against the sky. The work is Giorgionesque also in the somewhat arbitrary division of the ground into dun coloured mounds with sweeps of soft warm green in the distance. Were the 'Sacred and Profane Love' cleaned, the green of the mid-distance and trees would emerge from the brown varnish which now reduces them to a nondescript dark mass. We owe to Dr. Wickhoff the suggestion that this picture represents Medea listening to the persuasion of Venus, who would urge her to love Jason, and that the subject illustrates a passage from the Argonautica of Flaccus. The cupid who troubles the fountain would thus acquire a symbolic interest, and the cupids teasing a unicorn sculptured on the sides of the fountain become also associated in the scheme. This painting, to which I have for convenience so far given its old enchanting title, is one of the world's loveliest pictures. In no other work of art, 'Annunciation' or ' Visitation,' shall we discover two figures so enchantingly related to each other: in no other design is the eye more charmed by perfect spacing and ordering of the composing element. Few figures in art possess to the same degree the profound and feminine graciousness which characterises the self-absorbed figure of Medea, as yet unconscious of a tragic destiny; no figure invented by Titian or any other master surpasses in beauty of line the sinuous and enchanting curves which express the contour of the Venus; the invention of the crimson cloak which buttresses this figure, the extended arm against the sky, are each supreme inventions in design. There is a great 'preciousness' of thought in the placing of Medea's gloved hand on a nest of flowers, and the rose spray and leaves on the edge of the fountain are exquisite touches of pictorial fancy. In the masses of the foreground we shall find the purple hellebore and one or two butterflies as a premonition of the exquisite and intimate flowers and details which Titian will place later in his loveliest canvases. We are able to realise the different accent Titian has brought to the drawing in his pictures when we contrast the mass of soft hair on the shoulder of Medea and the two wisps of hair over the left ear, with the more timid, formal and Giorgionesque rendering of these details in the 'Salome.'
 * Charles Ricketts, Titian (1910), Chapter 7, pp. 44–45