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Fortune favours the brave One of the most highly esteemed French painters of the 18th century, François Boucher is known for exploring classical themes and allegories in his works and this drawing is no exception. The sheet depicts Venus, the Roman goddess of love, presenting arms to her son Aeneas. These arms, the shield and the helmet, were specially forged by Vulcan, the god of fire and metalworking. The subject of the drawing is taken from Virgil’s Aeneid (XIX BC) which recounts that Aeneas set off with these arms to fight against Turnus and the Italians to conquer the new Troy, Rome, becoming one of the mythological founders of the city.

A missing link This rare piece was the preparatory drawing for a lost painting, dated around 1747. Until recently all that remained to record the existence of the painting was an engraving, which in reverse presents the same composition as the present drawing. Boucher had painted two related episodes from the Aeneid:Venus asking Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas and The Apotheosis of Aeneas which were commissioned in 1746 by Lenormant de Tournehem, the director general of the Bâtiments du Roi, for the Versailles apartments of the dauphin Louis, son of King Louis XV. The dauphin rejected these and the king placed them in his bedchamber at the château de Marly.

Shedding light The drawing is in exceptional condition with remarkably fresh colours. Boucher has used a very interesting mixed technique combining pen, brown ink, and a brown wash, heightened with white on reddish-pink washed paper. The artist probably used this special technique to capture the correct light that he would have used in the final painting, and also most probably to offer the patron a modello of the finished work.The rediscovery of this drawing has great historical value and adds an important insight to the story of the lost painting.