Venus of Urbino

This painting was purchased in 1538 by Guidobaldo della Rovere, duke of Urbino , who called it the image of a "nude woman" in the correspondence with his ambassador in Venice. It was Giorgio Vasari who described it as "a young Venus lying down", an identification thereafter unanimously accepted. It reached Florence with Vittoria della Rovere who, in 1631, inherited the estate of her grandfather, Francesco Maria II; in 1637, she married Ferdinand II of Tuscany. The Venus was placed in the Tribuna of the Uffizi in 1736, but it was hidden from the visitors' view by a cover depicting Sacred Love.