Cupid (Eros) Carves the Bow

This is Rubens copying another painter, something he did all his life to keep learning. In 1614, already a celebrated master with his own busy Antwerp workshop, he made this careful version of a picture by the Italian Parmigianino, a graceful, faintly teasing image of Cupid carving his bow from a piece of wood. Parmigianino had painted the original some 80 years earlier, and by Rubens's day it was one of the most copied paintings in Europe, admired across the continent and kept in the imperial collection in Prague. Cupid glances back over his shoulder with a knowing look while he shapes the weapon that makes people fall in love. At his feet two small children struggle with each other, one trying to draw the other toward the god of love. Rubens keeps Parmigianino's elegant twist of the body, but the warmer, fuller flesh is unmistakably his own.