Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 82.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

31 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

But  things  were  destined  not  to  end  there.    One  of  Gior-
gione’s pupils was Titian, and the former student undertook
to  riff  on  his  master.    The  resulting  Venus  of  Urbino  is  a 
prototypical example of Renaissance imitatio—the creation 
of an original work from an existing model.  See id., at 8; 1 
G. Vasari, Lives of the Artists 31, 444 (G. Bull transl. 1965).
You can see the resemblance—but also the difference: 

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, oil on canvas 

The majority would presumably describe these Renaissance
canvases as just “two portraits of reclining nudes painted to
sell  to  patrons.”  Cf.  ante,  at  12–13,  22–23.  But  wouldn’t 
that  miss  something—indeed,  everything—about  how  an 
artist engaged with a prior work to create new expression 
and add new value? 

And the reuse of past images was far from done.  For here 
is  Édouard  Manet’s  Olympia,  now  considered  a  founda-
tional work of artistic modernism, but referring in obvious
ways to Titian’s (and back a step, to Giorgione’s) Venus: