Venus of Urbino

The portrait shocked the French public when it debuted.

Manet's painting references a famous nude in art history, Titian's Venus of Urbino.

But it also strayed away from tradition.

Titian's reclining nude is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

So what are the five tropes that we're going to talk about?

So the five that I look at in the book are the Venus, which is woman as the object of desire, the vessel, which are women as sort of containers for meaning or as symbols, the maiden women as young and passive waiting to be acted upon.

The mother, and here very specifically the mother's story of the completely devoted, eternally placid mother.

And then the monster, which needs to be tamed or defeated.

But yes, you present all of these counter stories that show that there's another way of looking at this, and this is what God invites us into.

And for each of these, you have really cool art that you're describing.

So let's start with Venus.

And you say, to be a woman is to desire to be desired.