Bronzino: Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time

Public Domain Photo: Allegorie des Triumphes der Venus (Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time), oil on wood painting(created around1545) by Angelo Bronzino (1503-1572), dimensions 146 cm x 116 cm (57 in x 46 in), located at the National Gallery, London.

Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (also known by other titles such as ‘An Allegory of Venus and Cupid’, ‘A Triumph of Venus’, ‘Allégorie du triomphe de Vénus’, and ‘Allegoria del trionfo di Venere’), is a painting by the Florentine Mannerist artist Angelo Bronzino (1503-1572), also known as Agnolo Bronzino, Agnolo di Cosimo and Il Bronzino.

There has been extensive scholarly debate on the identity of the figures in the painting, as well as its theme, which may be described as lust, deceit, and jealousy. The figure of Venus, holding the shiny golden apple she won in the Judgement of Paris, is easily identifiable. Venus is being embraced by her son Cupid, sporting his characteristic wings and quiver. The baldheaded, bearded figure is believed to be Father Time.

The identities of the other figures are to be hypothesized. The figure opposite Time, holding the drapery, is variously referred to as Oblivion, and sometimes interpreted as Night and opposing Time. The mask-like face of this figure is symbolic of the image of two actual masks lying at the lower right-hand corner.

The figure rending the hair has been often called Jealousy, an old woman, though the protruding muscles in the figure’s hands suggest it is a man. The young boy with roses and seemingly throwing them at Venus and Cupid is interpreted as Pleasure or Joy. The figure behind him is the most complex, with a face peeping out of Pleasure’s side, giving the impression of an innocent little girl, and interpreted as, ‘perhaps the boy’s companion’. But the strange thing with this girl is that she has her lower body made up of a scaly, snake-like creature and a long tail, suggesting that it can be a personification of Evil or Deception. While she holds a honeycomb or wasp’s nest in one hand and in the other hand there is a menacing creature, possibly a scorpion (with its tail or sting on the upper side), while the lower side looks like a small reptilian animal/ snake. The girl’s palms are also fitted switching positions, her right palm attached to her left arm and her left palm attached to her right arm. Some art critics describe her as "the most sophisticated symbol of perverted duplicity ever devised by an artist..."

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The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez

Image: The Rokeby Venus (1647-51), oil on canvas painting by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), dimensions 122 cm x 177 cm (48 in × 69.7 in), located at the National Gallery, London.

The Rokeby Venus (also known as: The Toilet of Venus, Venus at her Mirror, Venus and Cupid, or La Venus del espejo) by the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age Diego Velázquez, depicts goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed looking at a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid.

The nude Venuses of the Italian painters, such as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (1510) and Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538), have been quoted as the main inspiration for this work. The Rokeby Venus is the only surviving female nude by Velázquez. Nudes were extremely rare in this period of Spanish art due to moral policing by the Spanish Inquisition. But at the same time, nudes by foreign artists were collected by the court circle, and The Rokeby Venus was hung in the houses of Spanish courtiers until 1813 when it was brought to England to hang in Rokeby Park, Yorkshire. The National Art Collections Fund for the National Gallery, London, purchased the painting in 1906. Though it was vandalized and badly damaged in 1914 by the suffragette Mary Richardson, it soon was fully restored.

Nymph and Cupid by William Edward Frost

Nymph and Cupid (1870) oil on canvas by English painter William Edward Frost (1810-1877)

Venus and Cupid

Venus and Cupid, by an unknown artist from Holland or Germany, who was working in Venice in 1580s or 1600s, oil on canvas painting, found in Germany after the Second World War.

'Psyché aux enfers' by Adolphe Lyre

Psyché aux enfers (1904), oil on canvas painting by French artist Adolphe La Lyre (1848-1933), located at Musée Thomas-Henry, Cherbourg-Octeville, France

According to Greek mythology, traditions and popular folklore, Psyche was the deification of the human soul, often portrayed in ancient mosaics as a goddess with butterfly wings. Literally the Greek word psyche means ‘spirit, breath, life or animating force’.

Psyche was the youngest daughter of the King and Queen of Sicily, and the most beautiful person in Sicily. She used to boast that she was more beautiful than Aphrodite (Venus) herself, and Aphrodite sent Eros to transfix her with an arrow of desire, to make her fall in love with the nearest person or thing available. But, instead of punishing her, because of her beauty, even Eros (Cupid) fell in love with her, and took her to a secret place, eventually marrying her and having her made a goddess by Zeus (Jupiter).

By the 17th century, folk tales and mythological themes became a legitimate literary genre in Europe. The poet T. K. Harvey wrote:

They wove bright fables in the days of old,
When reason borrowed fancy's painted wings;
When truth's clear river flowed o'er sands of gold,
And told in song its high and mystic things!
And such the sweet and solemn tale of her
The pilgrim heart, to whom a dream was given,
That led her through the world, Love's worshipper,
To seek on earth for him whose home was heaven!

In the full city, by the haunted fount,
Through the dim grotto's tracery of spars,
'Mid the pine temples, on the moonlit mount,
Where silence sits to listen to the stars;
In the deep glade where dwells the brooding dove,
The painted valley, and the scented air,
She heard far echoes of the voice of Love,
And found his footsteps' traces everywhere.

But nevermore they met! Since doubts and fears,
Those phantom shapes that haunt and blight the earth,
Had come 'twixt her, a child of sin and tears,
And that bright spirit of immortal birth;
Until her pining soul and weeping eyes
Had learned to seek him only in the skies;
Till wings unto the weary heart were given,
And she became Love's angel bride in heaven!