Venus and Cupid

Download2422 × 3000 px View on a wall Edit

Artist: Rosalba Carriera (Italian, 1673–1757)
Medium: Watercolour and gouache on ivory
Size: 10.3 × 8.5 cm
Museum: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
Rights: Public Domain Mark

Venus, the goddess of love and fertility, is shown seated. Her gaze is wandering as she strokes her breast with her right hand and embraces her son with the other. Cupid is engaged in a playful interaction with a bird on a leash. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the bird is a common symbol of male sexuality, and the miniature suggests that it is her son, not Venus, who is in control of love. The provocative tone suggests that this delicate, tiny work of art was intended for private display.

The special nature of ivory as a material made it particularly suitable for such small and personal works of art. Its water-repellent surface required a high degree of technical skill and artistic talent. Rosalba Carriera excelled in this technique and popularised the use of ivory among miniaturists. She exploited the semi-transparent quality of the rare material by leaving selected parts of the surface unpainted to create striking light effects in the skin tones (50 Favorites in the SMK Collection).