Venus and Cupid

In 1520 the small Saxon town of Wittenberg was the loudest place in Europe. Martin Luther had nailed up his complaints against the Church three years earlier, and the whole continent was arguing about it. The town's leading painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder, was Luther's close friend and printed his pamphlets. That same year, in that same charged town, he signed and dated this Venus, a slender pagan goddess wearing nothing but a wide hat and a necklace, her small son Cupid tucked at her side. Cupid is up to something. He holds the bow but slips the arrow of love out of his mother's sight. Cranach painted this subject at least 15 times, each version a little different, turning out variations from a workshop that supplied princes across Germany. This one was later bought for the picture gallery of Carol I, the first king of Romania, which is how a Venus made in Reformation Saxony ended up in Bucharest.