Detail of Venus and Cupid by Lorenzo Lotto in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 2007

Venus and Cupid, late 1520s
Lorenzo Lotto (Italian, Venetian, ca. 1480–1556)
Oil on canvas; 36 3/8 x 43 7/8 in. (92.4 x 111.4 cm)
Purchase, Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift, in honor of Marietta Tree, 1986 (1986.138)

The theme of this picture, by the most eccentric genius of the Venetian Renaissance, was inspired by classical marriage poems (or epithalamia) and was almost certainly painted to celebrate a wedding (the Venus may be a portrait of the bride). Lotto was fascinated with emblematic devices. The shell above Venus' head and the rose petals on her lap are conventional attributes of the goddess. The ivy is symbolic of conjugal fidelity while the myrtle wreath and brazier suspended from it are accoutrements of the marriage chamber. Venus wears the earring and diadem of a sixteenth-century bride. Cupid's action, an augury of fertility, confers a mood of lighthearted wit on this most popular Venetian subject.

The painting was likely made for a sophisticated client of humanist sympathies, but its learned aspects manage not to overwhelm the viewer; as one critic recently observed, the painting is instead a triumph of delectation. Its bold but carefully considered palette would have been admired by intimates both for its ties to the classical world and for its earthier provocations. It ranks alongside the greatest Venetian nudes, such as Titian's Venus of Urbino (Uffizi, Florence), but it also enriches the genre by virtue of Lotto's individual wit and insistence on representing a real woman, with warm brown eyes, a longish nose, and a tender half-smile.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/08/eustn/hod_1986.138.htm