Neptune and Amymone

This composition derives either from a lost painting by Boucher, or from the tapestry for which that painting was a cartoon. The tapestry of Neptune and Amymone is the third in a series designed by Boucher representing The Loves of the Gods, of which the Beauvais workshop produced seven versions in circa 1750.

There is a bozzetto for the lost cartoon in the Louvre, and a study for the reclining female figure seen from the back, lower right, is in the Thierry collection, Paris (A. Ananoff, L'Opera Completa di Boucher, Milan, 1980, no. 357).