Venus, Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')

Nicolas Chaperon was ranked by Pierre-Jean Mariette among Simon Vouet's most accomplished pupils. After completing his apprenticeship in Vouet's large Paris workshop, Chaperon was seduced by the refined classicism of Nicolas Poussin, whom he may have met in Paris and certainly knew in Rome. In around 1640-2, Chaperon travelled to Rome where he worked under Poussin for François Sublet de Noyers in the Galleria Farnese. Chaperon's technique was so indebted to Poussin that paintings by the former, such as his Nurture of Jupiter (Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC; fig. 1), were engraved as works by Poussin as late as the nineteenth century. Their professional relationship in Rome was short-lived, and by 1644 Chaperon was documented in Malta, possibly as a result of a dispute with the master. In 1649 Chaperon returned to Rome, where he published a series of engravings after Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican Loggie, generally considered the finest engravings after the celebrated cycle. Chaperon, like Poussin, would spend his final years in Rome, never returning to his native country.

The School of Love, a subject popularized by Correggio in the early sixteenth century (National Gallery, London; fig. 2), depicts Mercury, the god of wisdom, and Venus, the goddess of love, overseeing the education of their son, Cupid. Faithful to the celebrated prototype, Chaperon focused on the young Cupid in the act of reading aloud from a manuscript. Technically, however, Chaperon's figures depart from the sensual treatment of Correggio's gods, reflecting the modified Baroque style of his first master, Vouet.