Venus and Cupid

Lorenzo Lotto painted this in the 1520s, and it was almost certainly a wedding gift. Venus reclines, wearing the crown, veil and pearl earring that a Venetian bride of the day would wear, and the whole picture is strung with marriage symbols, myrtle, ivy, rose petals, a seashell. Then there is the joke. Her son Cupid, standing beside her, aims a stream of urine through a laurel wreath onto his mother's body. To us it is startling. To Lotto's contemporaries the little urinating boy was a recognised classical motif and, here, a frank wish for fertility, for the marriage to be fruitful. The mood fits its moment, when rediscovered ancient poetry was bringing a lighter, more openly erotic tone into Italian painting. Lotto has taken that fashion and aimed it, literally, at the couple whose wedding this was made to bless.