Reclining Venus (1822)

 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: Reclining Venus (after Titian)

It's well established that Ingres revered the painters of the Italian Renaissance, particularly Raphael and Titian. This is one of the few direct homages. For comparison, the original is below.

In his 1880 travelogue Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain described this painting as “the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses”. (It's a good thing he never saw Courbet's nudes - he would have had a heart attack!) It wasn’t the nudity that prompted such a statement but rather “the attitude of one of her arms and hand”. The painting is Titian’s Renaissance masterpiece Venus of Urbino, and the “attitude”  to which Twain refers is one of implied self-gratification. But it seems that Twain's outrage is feigned.