Venus sending away Amor

Painted in 1860 and now in the Westphalian State Museum, this early mythological canvas treats an episode from the narrative world of Greco-Roman love mythology: Venus dismissing Amor (Cupid) — a motif with ancient and Renaissance precedents that carries ironic overtones about the power of the goddess of love to control or suppress the force of desire she embodies. The subject had been treated as a playful, slightly paradoxical conceit by Rococo painters; in Böcklin's handling, it likely carries a more earnest engagement with the dynamic between conscious will and involuntary emotion. This 1860 work is an early example of the mythological figure subjects that would come to dominate his career; the Düsseldorf training is still present in the careful execution, but the subject matter points clearly toward the mature vision.

A canvas of 1860 shows Böcklin still operating within the conventions of his academic training while beginning to develop his characteristic approach to mythological figure painting. The pairing of Venus — adult, authoritative — with the childlike or adolescent Amor provides a natural compositional dynamic of dominance and submission that structures the pictorial space.