Venus, Cupid and a Satyr

For a long time this little painting was read as a scene from Ovid, Jupiter approaching the beautiful Antiope in the shape of a satyr. The Kunsthistorisches Museum now doubts it, because none of the attributes of the king of the gods appear, and it reads the woman as Venus with her son Cupid and a satyr beside them. The museum's own title still carries a question mark. Von Aachen painted it around 1595 to 1598 on a sheet of copper about 30 centimetres tall. Copper gave a hard, perfectly smooth surface, and painters around 1600 liked it for small, highly finished pictures meant to be studied up close. The museum points to Correggio, the north Italian master of soft, turning bodies, in the refined poses and the elegant gestures. The monogram HVA is painted on the stone at the lower right.