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Lot Essay
This commanding picture is a key masterpiece by Luca Cambiaso, the great painter of Renaissance Genoa. That it was long attributed to Correggio implies its power as one of the most successful erotic works of the sixteenth century.
Luca Cambiaso, the son of a minor local painter, studied the Genoese commissions of such masters as Giulio Romano, Perino del Vaga, Beccafumi and Pordenone, and was almost certainly in Rome in 1547-50. In the ensuing decade he established his position as the major painter in Genoa, painting both altarpieces for major churches and significant decorative schemes for palazzi, many designed by his mentor the Perugian architect, Galeazzo Alessi for members of the prodigiously rich Genoese patrician families. Fluent as a draughtsman, Cambiaso refined a highly personal artistic language that would determine the course of painting in Genoa until the following century. Genoa was a notable beneficiary of the financial problems of the Spanish empire, and it was therefore not surprising that in 1583 Cambiaso was called by King Philip II to work in the Escorial.
This picture is a key component of the celebrated group of erotic treatments of classical subjects that Cambiaso painted from the 1550s onwards. Cambiaso was clearly aware of the work of Correggio (see for example Venus with Mercury and Cupid, London, National Gallery; fig. 1) and, like Titian, understood that patrons whose taste in religious iconography was fully in keeping with the tenets of the Counter Reformation had rather different aspirations for secular pictures. This group included versions of Venus and Adonis, such as that in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, in Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, and the canvas recently acquired by Musée du Louvre (fig. 2); and of Venus and Cupid, including the picture in the Art Institute of Chicago, and that in a private collection (for the latter see Boccardo and C. Di Fabio, op. cit., no. 62).
In the latter, as in the picture under discussion, Cambiaso shows a satyr reaching down to remove Cupid’s quiver: this is apparently an iconographic invention of his own, at direct variance with the traditional interpretation of the subject, by which Venus is deemed to have disarmed Cupid to restrain his activities and thus to bring desire under control. The painter’s erotic message in this canvas is thus more overt. The early popularity of the composition is attested by the number of recorded versions and copies, of which that acquired by Sir William Hamilton (on whom see lot 21) was also long deemed to be a masterpiece by Correggio. How disturbing the picture continued to be for some viewers is shown by the fact that David d’Angers was called in to supply a white shift to the otherwise naked Venus in the early nineteenth century (according to von Fabriczy, op. cit.), telling evidence of the erotic power the picture was seen to have in the age of Neoclassicism.
Luca Cambiaso, the son of a minor local painter, studied the Genoese commissions of such masters as Giulio Romano, Perino del Vaga, Beccafumi and Pordenone, and was almost certainly in Rome in 1547-50. In the ensuing decade he established his position as the major painter in Genoa, painting both altarpieces for major churches and significant decorative schemes for palazzi, many designed by his mentor the Perugian architect, Galeazzo Alessi for members of the prodigiously rich Genoese patrician families. Fluent as a draughtsman, Cambiaso refined a highly personal artistic language that would determine the course of painting in Genoa until the following century. Genoa was a notable beneficiary of the financial problems of the Spanish empire, and it was therefore not surprising that in 1583 Cambiaso was called by King Philip II to work in the Escorial.
This picture is a key component of the celebrated group of erotic treatments of classical subjects that Cambiaso painted from the 1550s onwards. Cambiaso was clearly aware of the work of Correggio (see for example Venus with Mercury and Cupid, London, National Gallery; fig. 1) and, like Titian, understood that patrons whose taste in religious iconography was fully in keeping with the tenets of the Counter Reformation had rather different aspirations for secular pictures. This group included versions of Venus and Adonis, such as that in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, in Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, and the canvas recently acquired by Musée du Louvre (fig. 2); and of Venus and Cupid, including the picture in the Art Institute of Chicago, and that in a private collection (for the latter see Boccardo and C. Di Fabio, op. cit., no. 62).
In the latter, as in the picture under discussion, Cambiaso shows a satyr reaching down to remove Cupid’s quiver: this is apparently an iconographic invention of his own, at direct variance with the traditional interpretation of the subject, by which Venus is deemed to have disarmed Cupid to restrain his activities and thus to bring desire under control. The painter’s erotic message in this canvas is thus more overt. The early popularity of the composition is attested by the number of recorded versions and copies, of which that acquired by Sir William Hamilton (on whom see lot 21) was also long deemed to be a masterpiece by Correggio. How disturbing the picture continued to be for some viewers is shown by the fact that David d’Angers was called in to supply a white shift to the otherwise naked Venus in the early nineteenth century (according to von Fabriczy, op. cit.), telling evidence of the erotic power the picture was seen to have in the age of Neoclassicism.