Vénus frigida

By 1614 Rubens was back in Antwerp for good, running the busiest workshop in northern Europe, and this is one of the few paintings he took the trouble to both sign and date. The title, Cold Venus, comes from a line by the Roman playwright Terence — without Ceres and Bacchus, that is without food and wine, love grows cold. So the goddess of love sits shivering and hunched while a small Cupid presses close for warmth. Rubens had spent eight years in Italy, and her crouching pose is lifted almost exactly from an antique marble he studied in the Gonzaga collection at Mantua. In front of her, Cupid's little arrows lie scattered on the ground.