Baco, Venus y Cupido

In 1530 the king of France, Francis the First, brought a Florentine painter named Rosso Fiorentino north to decorate his palace at Fontainebleau, and with him a whole Italian manner of long limbs and knowing elegance arrived at the French court. This mythological scene, Bacchus with his wine cup beside Venus and Cupid riding a lion below, was one of two such pictures Rosso made for the king soon after. It first hung as an oval, set above the door that led to the king's private rooms in the great gallery. Vasari, writing in 1568, said there was hardly anything better to be seen in painting. The figures twist into the elongated, artful poses that would define the school Rosso founded there.