Sacred and Profane Love (c1516). Oil on canvas. 118 x 279. Sacred and Profane Love is an oil painting by Titian, probably painted in 1514, early in his career. The painting is presumed to have been commissioned by Niccolò Aurelio, a secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten, whose coat of arms appears on the sarcophagus or fountain, to celebrate his marriage to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. It perhaps depicts a figure representing the bride dressed in white, sitting beside Cupid and accompanied by the goddess Venus. The title of the painting is first recorded in 1693, when it was listed in an inventory as Amor Divino e Amor Profano, and may not represent the original concept at all. Although much ink has been spilt by art historians attempting to decipher the iconography of the painting, and some measure of consensus has been achieved, basic aspects of the intended meaning of the painting, including the identity of the central figures, remain disputed. Two women, who appear to be modelled on the same person, sit on a carved Ancient Roman sarcophagus that has been converted to a water-trough, or a trough made to look like a Roman sarcophagus; the broad ledges here are not found in actual sarcophagi. How the water enters is unclear, but it leaves through a phallic-looking brass spout between the two women, next to an anachronistic coat of arms in the carving. This belongs to Niccolò Aurelio, whose presence in the picture is probably also represented by the spout. Between the two women is a small winged boy, who may be Cupid, son and companion of Venus, or merely a putto. He is looking intently into the water, and splashing a hand in it. The woman on the left is fully and richly dressed; her clothes are now usually recognized as those of a bride, though in the past they have been said to be typical of courtesan wear. In her hair she wears myrtle, both a flower sacred to Venus and one worn by brides. In contrast, the woman on the right is nude except for a white cloth over her loins and a large red mantle worn over one shoulder. It was generally recognised by the 20th century that, somewhat contrary to a natural first impression, if the painting indeed represented figures along the lines of Sacred and Profane Love, the clothed figure was profane love, and the nude one sacred love. The nude figure sits comfortably on the ledge of the trough, with one hand resting on it and the other held high, holding a vessel with smoke coming out of it, probably an incense-burner. In contrast the pose of the clothed figure, apparently poised and relaxed, becomes rather strange in the lower part of her body when considered carefully, the lower half of the bride's body is lost in her drapery and does not conform with her upper half. The ledge seems too high for her to sitting on it properly, and her knees are wide apart. Perhaps she is actually sitting on something else beside the trough, or this may just be one of a number of lapses in depicting anatomy found in Titian's early career. The clothed woman leans over, but is probably not supported by, a metal bowl whose contents have been described in various ways, despite it not being possible to see them. Another shallow metal bowl is on the ledge, nearer the nude figure; some have proposed a meaning for the decoration inside the bowl, such as the arms of Aurelio's bride, but this does not seem to be the case on close examination, after the picture was cleaned. It would be convenient if the arms were there, as an early objection to the marriage picture theory was that allusion to a marriage would require two coats of arms, not one. The carved scenes on the front face of the trough/sarcophagus do not yet have a generally agreed reading. They were described by Edgar Wind as A man is being scourged, a woman dragged by the hair, and an unbridled horse is led away by the mane, all perhaps images of the taming of the passions. Alternatively they have been seen as: Adam and Eve standing beside the Tree of Knowledge, Cain killing Abel, and the Conversion of Saint Paul, shown falling off his horse. By 1914 they had been claimed to derive from scenes in five different literary works, ancient and modern, reflecting the 19th-century taste for finding literary sources for paintings. They have been connected with the woodcut illustrations to Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The landscape on the left, behind the clothed woman, goes uphill to a what seems to be a walled castle or village dominated by a high defensive tower. There are two rabbits nearby, usually symbols of fecundity or lust in the Renaissance. The landscape behind the unclothed figure stretches downhill, with a village dominated by a church tower and steeple on the far side of water.