Cupid orders Mercury, messenger of the Gods, to announce the Power of Love to the Universe

Dated 1646 and from the Louvre's collection, this panel was part of the decorative scheme Le Sueur created for the Hôtel Lambert — one of the most ambitious secular decorative commissions in seventeenth-century Paris. The Hôtel Lambert, built for financier Jean-Baptiste Lambert on the Île Saint-Louis, became a showpiece of French classical interior decoration, with Le Sueur responsible for the Cabinet des Muses and the Cabinet de l'Amour. This panel depicting Cupid commanding Mercury to announce Love's power to the universe belongs to the mythological programme of the Cabinet de l'Amour, where Eros reigned as the supreme organising force of the cosmos. The subject draws on ancient literary sources — Plato's Symposium, Hesiod's Theogony — to present love as a cosmic principle. Le Sueur's treatment is characteristically elevated: the mythological figures move with a grace borrowed from Raphael's Vatican frescoes, and the allegory is made legible without becoming didactic.

On panel, the composition shows Le Sueur's decorative work at its most refined — figures arranged in elegant, interlocking movements that suit the decorative function of the cabinet panels. His colour is warm and luminous here compared with his religious works, with flesh tones achieving a pearlescent quality. Mercury's winged form and Cupid's commanding gesture are rendered with the flowing, confident drawing that characterised his mature decorative style.