Venus and Cupid

Abraham Bloemaert painted in Utrecht for more than 60 years, long enough that his style traveled from the twisting figures of late Mannerism to the calmer naturalism of the Dutch Golden Age. He is remembered less for any single picture than for whom he taught: much of the next Utrecht generation passed through his studio, including the painters who brought Caravaggio's dramatic lighting back from Rome. Venus with her son Cupid, the boy whose arrows make people fall in love, was a standard subject that let a painter show a mythological nude for a private collector's cabinet. Utrecht stayed largely Catholic within a Protestant republic, and its painters kept up a taste for these classical and religious themes that plainer Dutch cities had set aside.