and calls the painting of the head "superb", where the drapery is "dull", the organ "routine", but the dog "an inspiration". Lutenist versions The two main versions of Venus and Cupid with a Lute-player are similar in all but details. The one in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is the earlier, dated by the museum to 1555–65, measuring 150.5 x 196.8 cm, and attributed just to Titian. It probably belonged to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, and was certainly in the Imperial Collection in Prague by 1621. It then followed the path of the best of this collection: looted by the Swedes in 1648, taken to Rome by Queen Christina of Sweden when she abdicated, sold to the Orleans Collection after her death, and finally auctioned in London after the French Revolution. It was bought by Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Viscount FitzWilliam in 1798/99, whose bequest of his collections at his death in 1816 founded the museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates its version, which it calls Venus and the Lute Player, to c. 1565–70 (65 x 82 1/2 inches/165.1 x 209.6 cm), and attributes it to Titian and his workshop. It has been traced from the Cambridge version, and there may well have been a cartoon or a "studio version" for copying kept in Venice. It may have been kept in the studio for many years, being worked on sporadically, as the landscape, which is of high quality, "painted with speed and authority in Titian's freest style", seems to match his style of about 1560, but other parts do not. Possibly it was unfinished at Titian's death in 1576, and then "following his death, certain parts such as Venus's face and hands were brought to a much higher degree of finish", and some areas left unfinished. The New York version belonged to members of the royal family of Savoy from at the latest 1624 until some time after 1742. It then came to England and was owned by Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (d. 1759) and his heirs until sold to the dealer Joseph Duveen in 1930, who sold it to the museum in 1933. It had been at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, and in older sources may be called the Holkham Venus. Other versions with a lute-player, perhaps at least from Titian's workshop, are one in Bordeaux, and one destroyed in World War II in Dresden. Notes