Eighteenth-century French school

Cupid who shoots the arrow

Oil on canvas, 48 ​​x 40 cm

with frame 58 x 49 cm.

The painting, of pleasant quality and eighteenth-century grace, describes the small Cupid, God of Love, surrounded by fluffy clouds and intent on shooting one of his darts. The iconography, which originated in the cupid of the classical age, depicted as children armed with bows shooting their arrows, then became widespread in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, finding their full diffusion in the rocaille taste parameters. The delicate painting presented here is fully part of this production, probably participating in a series or realized as a charming token of love.

The painting takes up the numerous pictorial compositions created by the French master François Boucher (Paris 1703-1770). The good quality of the painting could lay for its derivation from the workshop. Born and raised in Paris, he received his artistic training at the workshop of François Lemoyne. In 1727 he left for a study trip to Italy, staying in Rome at the French Academy and, briefly, in Naples and Venice. In the peninsula he was able to learn about and study the Carraccis, Pietro da Cortona, and above all Guercino and Correggio, his great points of inspiration, without neglecting the Venetian masters, like Veronese and Tiepolo. Around 1731 Boucher returned to Paris, where he quickly gained the royal favor and interest of private collectors, becoming a very prolific artist who will profoundly influence the new rococo movement.

Finally, in his works we note some stringent assonances with the works of Sebastiano Ricci, which Boucher knew personally during his Venetian stay, tracing its style, characterized by rich decorative and luminous effects.

The observer of this beautiful painting easily succeeds in identifying himself with the figure that will be struck by the arrow and feels that dart as if it were in front of him, a sensation that the artist allows to try through a bold frontal perspective. Of inspiration for our artist, for this pictorial expedient, must certainly have been Guercino with his famous ‘Venus, Mars and Love’ (Modena, Galleria Estense), commissioned by the duke Francesco d'Este. With a formidable invention, Guercino portrays Cupid in the act of shooting the dart straight at the spectator, following the indication of Venus, whose right hand is painted almost trompe l'oeil. The viewer is thus called to identify himself in the purchaser of the work.

Cupid who shoots the arrow

The painting is in an excellent state of preservation, professionally relined and complete with a lacquered and gilded wooden frame.