Venus of Urbino

Yeah, I was there. All day. (well, I went to see it a bunch of times, anyway)

Two of my favorite comments on the painting (found on a professor's page):
As for Titian’s Venus — Sappho and Anactoria in one — four lazy fingers buried dans les fleurs de son jardin — how any creature can be decently virtuous within thirty square miles of it passes my comprehension.

Source: Algernon Swinburne, letter to Lord Houghton, March 31, 1864. Published in Swinburne’s Letters: The Yale Edition, vol. I: 1854-1869 (S.l.: Yale UP, 1959), no. 55, pp. 96-99, p. 99.

[T]here, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses — Titian’s Venus. It isn’t that she is naked and stretched out on a bed — no, it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine howl — but there the Venus lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to — and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest… Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public Art Gallery.

Source: Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (1880), chapter L, at Project Gutenberg.