Lot Essay
The present miniature is after an oil painting by François Boucher, L’Amour Désarmé, painted for Madame de Pompadour and recorded in the Collection of William Randolph Hearst, New York, in 1976 (see A. Ananoff, François Boucher, Geneva, 1976, vol. II, p. 75, no. 375). An almost identical miniature, attributed to Charlier, Venus disarming Cupid, is in the Wallace Collection, London (see G. Reynolds, Wallace Collection Catalogue of Miniatures, London, 1980, p. 96). Either the present lot or the miniature in the Wallace Collection was in the Collection of the Duke of Caylus, sold Paris, 19 April 1773, lot 59. A similar composition in oil on canvas, Vénus et Cupidon, by the workshop of Boucher was sold Sotheby’s, Paris, 22 June 2010, lot 41.