La Naissance de Vénus

By the 1750s François Boucher was the favourite painter of the French court and the close protégé of Madame de Pompadour, the king's mistress, who steered commissions his way. This is the kind of picture that made him. Venus, the goddess of love, rises from the sea on a bank of cloud and foam, surrounded by nymphs, cupids and sea creatures, the whole scene pitched as pure pleasure for a private salon rather than any solemn altar. Boucher had worked the theme before in other versions, adapting his own compositions to fit new patrons and new rooms. A decade on, Louis XV named him First Painter to the King, the top artistic post in France, even as a younger generation, the critic Diderot among them, was starting to grumble that his mythologies were all charm and no weight.