Venus and Cupid with a Satyr

In the 1520s the Duke of Mantua, Federico II Gonzaga, was quietly assembling a set of mythological pictures meant for private rooms rather than for the chapel, sensual subjects a prince could show to trusted guests. Correggio, working up in Parma, supplied several of them, and this sleeping Venus was one. She lies in a shaded glade with the boy Cupid beside her, both deeply asleep, while a grinning satyr lifts the blue cloth that had covered them. Correggio painted it as a companion to another Venus now in London. The soft, blurred light on her skin is the effect he was famous for, worked here at the very edge of shadow.