Vénus et Cupidon

Cranach painted this in 1509, at the court of Frederick the Wise in Wittenberg, and it is a genuine first, the earliest known life-size mythological nude made in German lands, a full-length Venus with her small son Cupid at her side. Italian painters had been producing classical nudes for a generation, but Cranach had never crossed the Alps to see them. He was reaching for that antique world at second hand, from prints and travellers' reports, and the result looks nothing like an Italian Venus. She is pale, elongated and cool, entirely northern, standing against a dark ground with only a sheer veil for cover. Cranach would go on to paint dozens of these slender goddesses across his long career, and this is the one that started them.