Provenance

Mrs. Close Smith

Grenville, Caroline Mary Elizabeth

British

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Shown from the knees up, a seated woman and two winged, nude children gather at the center of this vertical painting. They all have pale, peachy skin. At the center of the composition, the woman, Venus, sits with her body angled slightly to our right as she turns her head back to our left, gazing into the distance with brown eyes under thick brows. She wears a jeweled headpiece over her upswept, honey-blond hair, and delicate ringlets frame her brow. Her cheeks are tinged with dusty rose-pink, and she has a long nose and a ruby-red, bow mouth. She wears an amber-yellow gown trimmed with white lace at the neckline. The short sleeve we can see is slashed to reveal cream-white fabric puffing out of the openings. A wide, gold chain inset with gleaming pale aquamarine-blue jewels the size of thumbprints drapes over her far shoulder and across her chest like a sash. She wears a pearl necklace and teardrop-shaped earrings, and more pearls and gems adorn the gold bracelets on her wrists. One child, in the lower right corner of the painting, stands in front of her with his back to us. He holds an arrow in his left hand, which he rests on the chocolate-brown cloth draped across Venus’s lap. He turns head to the right, and his face is partially obscured by one of his small, charcoal-gray and cream-white wings. Venus holds two ends of an off-white cloth tied around his head as a blindfold. Just beyond him is another person, visible from the hip up, who fills the height of the composition but is mostly cropped by the right edge. We see the left arm, shoulder, and edge of the hip as they stand with their back to us. The arm we can see is raised to hold what appears to be a metal bowl. On Venus’s opposite side, to our left, the second winged child stands on the ledge on which Venus sits. He leans one hand and his chin on Venus’s shoulder and gazes off to our right. He has chestnut-brown hair and eyes, and a round nose in a pudgy face. Loosely painted cranberry-red drapery hangs from the upper left corner and falls in cascading folds behind him. An azure-blue sky with tan clouds is visible beyond the drapes.
Italian 16th Century, Anonymous Artist, Venus Blindfolding Cupid, c. 1566/1570 or c. 1576/1580, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.2.12

Venus Blindfolding Cupid

Italian 16th Century, Anonymous Artist · c. 1566/1570 or c. 1576/1580 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.2.12