The Loves of the Artists by Jonathan Jones

Author:Jonathan Jones [Jones, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857203212
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Chapter Eleven

VENUS AND CUPID

The bed was hung with a silken canopy embroidered with hundreds of tiny satyrs. The king and his lover lay below this heavenly fabric looking at a new painting installed in the royal chamber – wondering who the people in it were, what it all meant. As they spoke, their eyes were fixed on the slender fingers manipulating a breast; until they spoke no more, but kissed.

In about 1545 King Francis I of France received a gift from the Duke of Tuscany. It was a painting with a sheen on it like polished glass and an impudence that made all who saw it gasp. It was moved straight away into the private apartments of Fontainebleau. After a day’s hunting for stag and boar in the woods around the ornately frescoed and stuccoed palace, the king could contemplate undisturbed the picture’s glittering aggregation of stimuli: eggshell skin, daring gestures, lascivious lips.

A beautiful woman curls her legs on a violet silk sheet, beside a pink pillow, in front of a blue curtain. As she raises her arm in a graceful fleshy loop, a curly-haired youth kisses her and caresses a nipple between the fingers of his right hand. She looks into his eyes with evident pleasure. Sex is a cool game in this painting, a calm hedonism. No need to rush, for Father Time himself, bearded and bald, watches red-faced but helpless as the lovers enjoy their eternal mutual beauty. The boy is as handsome as the woman, androgynous even, his skin smooth, his buttocks arched.

She is Venus, goddess of love, and he is Cupid, her son. Their incestuous relationship may be a reference to the legend of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Lucius Apuleius in the second century AD. In this story the love affair of Psyche and the god of love suffers many setbacks – one of which is the jealousy of Cupid’s possessive mother, Venus. Apuleius describes Venus kissing her son with lingering sensuality, like a lover.

Since Venus and Cupid are deities of desire, they can hardly be expected to behave themselves. But most representations of their relationship are cuddly and innocent. Venus hugs a baby Cupid, or is surrounded by winged amores. This picture is unusual in savouring an amoral encounter between the deities of love. It actively seeks to make sex as dirty as possible, and to exalt the perverse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.