Flora was originally the goddess Flora in Greek mythology. Each year from April 28 to May 3 was designated as Flora Day by Italians, during the festival people gather to enjoy playing together. They used a variety of flowers to decorate themselves and their animals. Besides, environment was also full of flowers and flora usually acted by the beauty that held flowers in hand. Artists were always keen on borrowing mythological goddess to express their own aesthetic ideals, and convey their thoughts and feelings in humanity, human relationship and love.
Flora
Flora painted by Titian, is a strong thematic portrait. This painting depicted a beauty of Venice with bouquet, the whole image just like bloomed flowers. It was said that the image in this painting is the artist's lover at that time, and he just borrowed the name of myth to his affection for her. This painting was composed by half-length portrait, whose image turned around and looked down with meditation posture. It seemed that her loose underwear slipped off the shoulder to bare breasts for her turning, the golden hair hung down loosely in shoulders, which contrasted to the flesh, revealing robust body full of life and energy. As we can see, the whole image gave us sense of solemn and elegance.
Titian is a great master who emphasized calorific harmony. He considered that brush strokes should be subordinated to the needs of the contrast between the light and colors. But in Flora, we failed to see brushwork and color, but an image with the real hair, body and dress.
