Venus and Love

Nattier's 'Venus and Love,' in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, belongs to his production of mythological figure paintings — works that occupied a space between his portrait practice and the grand manner of history painting. Venus and Cupid (here 'Love') were among the most painted pairings in European art, the goddess of love and her winged son forming a natural complement in any Rococo decorative scheme. Nattier's version, without a clear date (the 1800 catalogue date is impossible for a painter who died in 1766), would have been executed in his characteristic manner: pale, luminous flesh tones, soft hair, and the playful compositional dynamic between the adult goddess and the child deity. Marseille's Beaux-Arts collection holds a range of French art across periods, and this mythological work fits within its eighteenth-century holdings.

Mythological figure painting gave Nattier the opportunity to use a more idealized figure canon than in portraiture, applying his luminous skin tones to an invented ideal rather than a specific individual. Venus's traditional beauty required the most refined version of his flesh-tone technique, while the child Cupid presented the delicate softness he reserved for young figures.