A woman with pale gold hair turns her head to look into a mirror, one hand pressed to her bare breast, a gold bracelet on her wrist. A red velvet robe lined with fur slides off her body and falls across her lap. At the right a winged boy holds up the black-framed mirror, in which her face appears, and another boy, at the left, lifts a ring of laurel leaves above her head. The goddess is Venus, attended by two Cupids.

The National Gallery of Art notes that Venus with a mirror has a long history, often standing for vanity in the Middle Ages, which is hard to square with an immortal goddess. Titian painted the subject more than once; the Washington picture dates from about 1555. It was sold in 1581 by Titian's son Pomponio, with the contents of his house in Venice, to Cristoforo Barbarigo and stayed in the Barbarigo family until 1850, when it was sold to Czar Nicholas I and went to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Andrew W. Mellon bought it in 1931 and gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1937. It is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.