Love Requests Venus to Return His Weapons to Him
1768
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Louis-Marin Bonnet
Louis-Marin Bonnet (1736–1793) was a French artist, born in Paris.
See the richer artist page1768
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Love Requests Venus to Return His Weapons to Him is a 1768 by Louis-Marin Bonnet, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows Venus, a Roman goddess, with a tiny cupid beside her. The cupid is asking Venus for his quiver of arrows. Venus is looking directly at the viewer with a teasing expression. The scene is playful and intimate. The cupid's arrows are partly hidden by feathers, which also draw attention to Venus' nudity. To learn more about this style, check out the technique of sfumato.
For his aristocratic patrons, Boucher made numerous paintings of intriguing female nudes, thinly veiled as Roman goddesses lounging in luxury. Bonnet’s color chalk-manner prints of similar subjects offered middle-class buyers sumptuous yet affordable versions of Boucher’s wildly popular images. Here, a tiny cupid pleads with Venus for his quiver of arrows as she gazes teasingly at the viewer. Their feathered ends simultaneously conceal and draw attention to her nudity. With cupid’s arrows in her control, it is Venus—rather than cupid—who has the power to arouse feelings of love.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Louis-Marin Bonnet (1736–1793) was a French artist, born in Paris.
See the richer artist page
