1590
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Venus and Mars with Cupid and the Three Graces in a Landscape is a 1590 oil by Domenico Tintoretto, a Mannerism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
You see a god and goddess lounging in a leafy glade: Mars in armor, Venus half-dressed, Cupid playing at their feet, and three dancing Graces in the background. The painting is full of tiny jokes. Mars’s helmet is stuffed with fruit—maybe a dig at how love makes warriors silly. The Graces’ see-through scarves are painted so thin you can count every thread. It’s like a gossip column from 1590, dressed up as mythology. If you like this light touch, look up the technique called *glazing*.
Don Gaspar Méndez de Haro y Guzmán, Marqués del Carpio y Helice and viceroy of Naples (died 1687), by 1682/3 [his monogram, DGH / 4,67 / 1406, was painted on the reverse of the old lining canvas; the painting is no. 465 [sic] in the 1682/83 inventory of the Carpio collection, Rome, as “Un quadro che rappresenta Venere sopra un Letto, che vede Amore che ha gl’ occhi bendati, e da Lontano Le tre Gratie nude di mano di Domenicao Tintoretto”, and no. 1406 in the 1687 inventory of the same collection, taken in Naples, see Burke and Cherry 1997]; probably by descent to the Alba collection through…
Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, June 1–November 1, 1933, no. 137, as by Jacopo Tintoretto. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, June 1–November 1, 1934, no. 55, as by Jacopo Tintoretto. New York, Durlacher Brothers, A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Jacopo Robusti, il Tintoretto, 1519–1594, February 20–March 18, 1939, no. 9, as by Jacopo Tintoretto. New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Classics of the Nude, April 10–29, 1939, no. 9, as by Jacopo Tintoretto. Art Institute of Chicago, Masterpiece of the Month, May 1941, no cat., as by Jacopo Tintoretto. Birmingham Museum…
Art News 27, 13 (1928), p. 24, ill. Daniel Catton Rich, “Mars and Venus of Tintoretto,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 22 (1928), pp. 102–03, cover ill., detail ill. Daniel Catton Rich, “Chicago Given Worcester Art,” Art News 28, 22 (1930), p. 9. Daniel Catton Rich, “The Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Worcester Gift,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 24 (1930), p. 30. Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), pl. CCCCIX. Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago, 1932), pp. 4, 173, ill. Bernard Berenson, Italian…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Domenico Robusti, also known as Domenico Tintoretto, was an Italian painter from Venice. He grew up under the tutelage of his father, the renowned painter Jacopo Tintoretto.
See the richer artist page
