Venus Combing Cupid's Hair

For a long time the Medici inventories did not call this a Venus and Cupid at all. The 1769 entry lists it as Venus delousing Cupid, which tells you how the picture struck people. It is a goddess on a rock, across nearly two and a half metres of canvas, going through her son's hair the way any mother would. Giovanni da San Giovanni signed and dated it 1627, and it caused some scandal at the time, partly for the handling of the drapery and partly because the god of love had been reduced to an ordinary troublesome child. It first appears in writing in 1637, in the inventory of Prince Giovan Carlo de' Medici's villa at Mezzomonte outside Florence, and it stayed with him until he died. It hangs in the Sala delle Allegorie, the first room of the Volterrano quarter.