Vénus consolant l'Amour

This was painted in 1751 for the most powerful woman at the French court who was not the queen: Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. She commissioned it, and it hung at Bellevue, the chateau the king built for her outside Paris. The subject looks like pure decoration, Venus surrounded by doves and cupids, reaching to take the arrows from her son so he can do no more mischief. But Pompadour was said to have posed for the goddess, and she used Boucher and painters like him deliberately, shaping how the court saw her. Boucher gives Venus skin like porcelain against blue silk, the polished, weightless manner that made him the favourite painter of that world.