Vénus Cythérée

Jan Matsys learned to paint like this the hard way. In the 1540s Antwerp expelled him as a Protestant, and he spent years abroad, some of them in Genoa working for the Italian admiral Andrea Doria. When he finally returned home he brought a taste for warm Italian nudes with him, and painted this one, a reclining Venus with a bouquet of carnations, in 1561. Look past her to the harbour in the background and you are looking at Genoa, the city of his exile, worked in from memory. The carnations were thought of then as a spur to love, and the peacock beside her carried a quieter warning about vanity and the worship of pleasure.