Rokeby Venus with blond hair, Velázquez's Venus is a brunette. The female figure can be identified as Venus because of the presence of her son, Cupid. Venus gazes into a mirror held by Cupid, who is without his usual bow and arrows. When the work was first inventoried, it was described as "a nude woman", probably owing to its controversial nature. Venus looks outward at the viewer of the painting through her reflected image in the mirror. However, the image is blurred and reveals only a vague reflection of her facial characteristics; the reflected image of the head is much larger than
Pardo Venus arm drawn up to support the head and the other resting near the crotch, is essentially the same as that in Giorgione's "Dresden Venus", which after his death in 1510 was completed by Titian. The pose apart, the paintings offer a strong contrast, with the noisy and hectic scene in the "Pardo Venus" completely different from the tranquil and deserted landscape in Dresden. Around 1534 Titian had painted the "Venus of Urbino", and a repetition of this from 1545, perhaps a lost recorded "Venus" sent to Charles V, "was the basis" for the "Venus and Musician" series, which exists in