Pastoral Concert, after Titian (oil on canvas laid down on panel)

Etty's rich colours and luminous glazes are owed principally to Titian, whom he copied extensively on trips to Italy. Etty found the original painting, of which this is a copy of the central figure grouping, in the Louvre. Traditionally attributed to Giorgione, The Pastoral Concert is now considered a work from Titian's youth. It is a mysterious painting, an allegory of Poetry and Music; two fully dressed men are in concert with a girl, whose nudity is incongruous to modern eyes, but who exists only in the imaginations of the two men they inspire, according to a taste widespread in Venice for simultaneous depictions of the visible and the invisible.