Vénus avec Mercure et Cupidon (« L'École de l'amour »)

This was made to hang beside another picture that now lives in Paris. Together they were a pair about two kinds of love. In the Louvre canvas Venus and Cupid lie asleep in a wood while a satyr looks on, standing for earthly, bodily desire. This one is the higher love. Venus, unusually given wings, holds her son's bow while his father Mercury teaches the little god to read. Correggio painted them around 1525 for a Mantuan courtier close to the Gonzaga, the family who ran the city. A century later the Gonzaga ran short of money and sold much of their fabulous collection to King Charles the First of England, these two paintings among them. After Charles was executed his pictures were scattered again, and the pair came to rest apart, one in London and one in Paris.