Dance of the Cupids

Look at the grass along the bottom and you find bows and quivers lying where they were dropped. The cupids have stopped shooting. They are dancing in a ring around a tree while others sit up in the branches playing instruments, and above, on a cloud, Venus leans in to kiss Cupid.

Albani painted this in the early 1620s on a sheet of copper, a support that holds colour like enamel and was used for pictures meant to be looked at close up. Restorers found lilies on the original frame, which has led to the suggestion that the patrons were the Farnese and that the painting was made for a wedding or a betrothal. The scene in the left background supports that reading. A woman is being carried off in a chariot, Proserpina taken by Pluto to be his wife.

Brera acquired it in 1811, when the gallery bought the Sampieri collection in Bologna.