Venus and Eros/Cupid
In Latin literature, Cupid is usually treated as the son of Venus without reference to a father. Seneca says that Vulcan, as the husband of Venus, is the father of Cupid. Cicero, however, says that there were three Cupids, as well as three Venuses: the first Cupid was the son of Mercury and Diana, the second of Mercury and the second Venus, and the third of Mars and the third Venus. This last Cupid was the equivalent of Anteros, "Counter-Love," one of the Erotes, the gods who embody aspects of love. The multiple Cupids frolicking in art are the decorative manifestation of these proliferating loves and desires. During the English Renaissance, Christopher Marlowe wrote of "ten thousand Cupids"; in Ben Jonson's wedding masque Hymenaei, "a thousand several-coloured loves ... hop about the nuptial room".
In the later classical tradition, Cupid is most often regarded as the son of Venus and Mars, whose love affair represented an allegory of Love and War. The duality between the primordial and the sexually conceived Eros accommodated philosophical concepts of Heavenly and Earthly Love even in the Christian era.
Venus and Eros/Cupid Stamp Collection
Vietnam 1990
Ghana 2004
Soviet Union 1984
Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus This is an autograph version of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) famous picture of 1784, painted for Lord Carysfort (now Tate Gallery, London). Carysfort, who visited Russia on a number of occasions, asked the artist to make the copy as a gift for Prince Grigory Potyomkin. In this work of charming but sensuous intimacy - Reynolds originally suggested it should be called "Half Consenting" - the goddess of beauty and love, Venus, is a coquettish young woman, hiding her face from immodest glances with her arm. Mischievous Cupid is pulling at the end of the blue silk ribbon which encircles her waist, looking attentively up at his mother to watch her reaction. It is possible that the model for the original painting was Emma, Lady Hamilton, famous as the mistress of Lord Nelson.
Paraguay 1977
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Bhutan 1991
Belgium 2018
Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes by rubens
Venus Frigida (Cold Venus) is a 1611 oil on panel painting by Peter Paul Rubens, now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. It is one of the few works which he both signed and dated and derives its title from a quotation from the Roman playwright Terence, "sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus" ("without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes") i.e. love cannot survive without food and wine). He draws Venus' crouched pose from what would later be called the Lely Venus, which he saw in the Gonzaga collection during his time in Mantua.
The whole painting
Paraguay 1987 Venus, Cupid, Bacchus And Ceres by Peter Paul Rubens
Romania 2016 Venus, Cupid, Bacchus And Ceres by Abraham Janssens van Nuyssen
The whole painting
Eqtorial Guinea 1973
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Ajman 1971
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time is an allegorical painting of about 1545 by the Florentine painter Agnolo Bronzino. It is now in the National Gallery, London. Scholars do not know for certain what the painting depicts.
The painting has come to be known as Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, and it is generally agreed that these are the principal figures (with "Folly" representing this or the personification of a similar concept). Cupid and Venus kiss in the foreground, while the putto Folly prepares to shower them with rose petals. The bald Time, at the top, looks on and holds a cloth. The meaning of the other three figures and the interactions between them all is much less certain. The painting displays the ambivalence, eroticism, and obscure imagery that are characteristic of the Mannerist period, and of Bronzino's master Pontormo.
Hungary 1968
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Ajman 1970
Venus, Cupid and Envy (1548-50) This painting is a variant on Bronzino's Venus, Cupid and Time in London, the major allegorical work of his mature years. The Budapest painting, slightly larger than the London picture, is also an allegory of Venus and Cupid, who play with his bow and arrows, and Venus is also set against a light blue drapery, on which lie two masks symbolizing deceit.
Venus and Cupid is an oil painting on panel of c. 1533 by Pontormo, from a lost drawing or cartoon by Michelangelo, in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.[1] A preparatory study is in the British Museum and a copy by Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio is in the Palazzo Colonna in Rome. Other copies are in the Royal Collection at Kensington Palace, in Hildesheim, a small version in Geneva attributed to Michele Tosini and two in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (one attributed to Hendrik van der Broeck and the other an anonymous drawing). Giorgio Vasari made three copies for Ottaviano de' Medici.
Romania 1971
Ajman 1971 Venus and Cupid by Jan (Mabuse) Gossaert 1521
Ajman 1971 Venus and Cupid by Raphael 1518 Villa Farnesina, Rome
Romania 1969 Venus and Cupid by School flamanda 17 cent.
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Raphael's pictorial narrative in the Loggia di Psiche begins in the spandrels of the short side on the left as one enters and continues along the spandrels to the right to the second short side and then along the entrance side. These triangular surfaces represented a problematic format for artists. Raphael solved this challenge in ever new and surprising ways, causing the form of the painting's support and the composition of its figures to interact in particularly fortuitous and varied manners. In the broad space of the first spandrel Venus and her son are affectionately close together. Jealous, the mother is pointing downward, where Psyche is being admired by mortals for her beauty.
Bhutan 1989 Worship of Venus by titian
Mahra 1968 Worship of Venus by titian
Redonda 1988 Worship of Venus by titian
The Worship of Venus is an oil on canvas painting by the Italian artist Titian completed between 1518 and 1519, housed at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. It describes a Roman rite of worship conducted in honour of the goddess Venus each 1 April. On this occasion, women would make offerings to representations of the goddess so as to cleanse "every blemish on their bodies".
In Titian's work, two nymphs, one young and one matronly, are situated to the right of the ceremony, attending to a shrine holding a representation of Venus. The shrine is surrounded by votive tablets. The older woman checks on the decorations with the use of a mirror which she holds high in her extended right hand. The foreground of the canvas is thronged with a swarm of male infants, or putti, who distract themselves in activities such as climbing trees, leaping, flying, gathering apples, lying around, fighting, fondling, shooting arrows and pulling each other's hair. A dam is shown in the middle background, near a sunlit meadow. The far distance is decorated with a mountain and blue sky.
Bhutan 1991 Worship of Venus by Rubens
Bhutan 1991 Worship of Venus by Rubens
The whole painting
The Feast of Venus is a painting by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is a fanciful depiction of the Roman festival Veneralia celebrated in honor of Venus Verticordia.
Venus Verticordia ("the changer of hearts") was an epithet of the Roman goddess Venus, alluding to the goddess' ability to change hearts from lust to chastity.
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Paraguay 1975 Cupid complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Cupid complaining to Venus is an oil painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1531). He was a leading painter of the German Renaissance, who had trained in Flemish studios.
There are about 20 similar works by Cranach and his workshop created, from the earliest dated artwork in Gustow Palace of 1527 to one in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, from 1545, with the figures in different poses, which also differentiates in other details. The Metropolitan Museum of Art states that the number of different versions suggests that this was one of Cranach’s most famous and successful compositions.
The winged infant Cupid stands the left of a tree which bears red apples. He is holding a honeycomb, possibly taken from a hole towards the bottom of the tree's trunk. He is being assailed by honeybees, infuriated by his theft of their sweet treasure. Venus is depicted as a voluptuous woman to the right of the tree. She is holding up a branch with her left hand, and rests her left foot on another.
Romania 1967 Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Ajman 1970 Cupid complaining to Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Ajman 1972 Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Paraguay 1970 Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Yemen kigdom 1970 Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Cranach was equally successful in a series of paintings of mythological scenes which nearly always feature at least one slim female figure, naked but for a transparent drape or a large hat.
These are mostly in narrow upright formats; examples are several of Venus, alone or with Cupid
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Romania 1971 Venus and Cupid in a landscape, Palma Il Vecchio - Oil On Canvas - 118 x 209 cm - 1524 - (The Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, United Kingdom))
Antigua Barbuda 2003 Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Hungary 1974 Venus and Cupid by Károly Brocky - 1850 - Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest
Paraguay 1971 Venus and Cupid
Annibale Carracci 1592
Paraguay 1973 Venus and Cupid
Spranger Bartholomäus 1590
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Venus Cupid and Satyr
or Jupiter and Antiope
See explanation in Jupiter and Antiope
Ajman 1973
Paraguay 1975
Venus with Mercury and Cupid The School of Love or The Education of Cupid is a c. 1525 painting by the Italian painter Correggio, now in the National Gallery.
MONACO 2016 Venus with Mercury and Cupid Mercury teaching geography to Amor in the presence of Venus, painting by Louis Jean François Lagrenée
Paraguay 1975 Venus and Two Cupids by Andrea del Brescianino 1525 Galleria Borghese, Rome
Ajman 1971 Venus and Two Cupids by Andrea del Brescianino 1525 Galleria Borghese, Rome
The whole painting Venus and Two Cupids
Paraguay 1985 (both stamps) Venus and Cupid at the forge of vulcan by Rubens 1620 Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
or Without Ceres and Bacchus Venus Would Freeze 1620 Mauritshuis, The Hague
Albrecht Dürer’s engraving traditionally called “The doctor’s dream” is thought to be an early work, dating from his late twenties, i.e. circa 1497-1498. It shows a man sleeping by a hot stove as a devil blows evil thoughts into his ear. His thoughts are perhaps visualised in the figure of Venus, who gestures towards the stove, and Cupid, who learns to walk on stilts in the foreground. The print was already known in 1609 as “Der traümende Doctor” (The dreaming doctor). The man is certainly sleeping and he does look somewhat like the traditional representation of the scholar.
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San Marino 2008 Venus and Amor by Pellegrini
Paraguay 1978 The doctor's dream by Durer 1620
Spain 2004 Venus and Amor on a table cloak 18 cen. by Jean Baptiste Andre Furet (1720-1807)
Manama 1971 The Birth of Cupid with Venus , Master of Flora (Italian, Fontainebleau, second half 16th century)
This painting appears to depict the birth of Cupid, with attendants ministering to his mother, Venus. The lively, decorative composition is typical of French artists working in the style developed by the Italians at the château de Fontainebleau, such as Rosso Fiorentino of Florence and Primaticcio and Niccolo dell Abate of Bologna. The frame is sixteenth-century Italian.