Venus and Cupid

Author: Sarah Vowles

This is one of two drawings in the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen that are probably by the same hand and show mythological figures.^[1] They were once believed to be works by Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) and, in 1957, Philip Pouncey suggested that they could be by Bernardino Poccetti (1548-1612), but neither of these attributions is convincing.^[2] More recently, William Rearick proposed an attribution to the Flemish artist Pauwels Franck (1540-1596), although the most recent discussion of the drawings’ authorship, by Bert Meijer in 2017, concludes persuasively that a more generic attribution to the School of Verona is more fitting.^[3] The abraded condition of the present drawing means that our sense of the artist’s style and technique is particularly compromised, and it seems unlikely that a conclusion about attribution will be reached unless the drawings can be compositionally related to a particular painting.

It is highly likely that both the Venus and Cupid and the Hercules were drawn as studies for the frescoed decoration of one of the mainland villas that served as elegant retreats for noble Venetian families, and were commonly ornamented with allegorical and mythological scenes. The design of both drawings would suit a figure designed for a fictive niche, a frequent device in such decorative schemes. In both cases, the figures are contained within a narrow upright field, something especially visible in the Venus and Cupid, where the child-god squirms behind his mother’s legs. No direct connection to a finished decorative scheme has yet been found, although the grouping may have been inspired by a Venus and Cupid painted by Paolo Veronese and his studio in the Villa Barbaro at Maser.^[4]