Venus Asks Vulcan to Cast Arms for her Son Aeneas

Around 1630 Anthony van Dyck was back in his native Antwerp, in the years between his long study trip through Italy and the day Charles the First would call him to London to paint the English court. Here he takes a scene from Virgil. Venus has come to the forge of her husband Vulcan, the lame smith of the gods, to ask him to hammer out armour for her son Aeneas, the Trojan hero she bore to a mortal man. Vulcan works the metal while she leans in to persuade him. The small winged child crowding the front of the picture is Cupid, her other son. Louis the Fourteenth owned the canvas before 1709, and it went on public view when the Louvre first opened its galleries in 1793.