Venus Asking Vulcan for Arms for Aeneas

Virgil's Aeneid has an awkward family scene at its centre. Venus needs armour for her son Aeneas, who is about to fight for a foothold in Italy, and the only smith who can make it is her husband Vulcan, who is not the boy's father. Aeneas was her son by a mortal, the Trojan prince Anchises. So she asks at night, in her husband's arms, and Virgil has Vulcan give way at once.

Boucher painted the request in 1732, not yet 30 and only recently back in Paris, on a canvas two and a half metres tall. It was made for the billiard room of a Paris town house belonging to François Derbais. 25 years later Boucher returned to the same story on a far larger scale for a royal commission, choosing the next moment, when the armour is already made and handed over. That later picture hangs in the Louvre too.

This first version stayed in private hands until 1786, three years before the Revolution, when it was bought for the collection of Louis XVI.