Cupidon se plaignant à Vénus

Lucas Cranach the Elder ran a busy workshop in Wittenberg, the very town where Martin Luther had nailed up his theses a few years before, and Cranach was Luther's close friend and printer. Around 1526 he painted this small panel of a story from an ancient Greek poet. Cupid has stolen a honeycomb and been stung by the bees, so he runs to his mother Venus to complain, holding up the dripping comb. Venus stands nude and unbothered, a dark hat on her head, an apple tree heavy with fruit above her. A Latin verse painted at the top spells out the lesson, that the sting of the bees is like the brief sting of love's pleasure, which brings lasting pain. Cranach returned to this exact subject again and again over the following decades, turning out version after version for collectors who wanted a pretty nude with a moral attached.