Amore trionfante tra gli emblemi dell'arte e della guerra

Willeboirts Bosschaert worked in Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands, and his best customer was on the other side of the war. Frederik Hendrik, stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, commissioned 17 mythological paintings from him between 1642 and 1647 for his country houses near The Hague, while the Republic and Spain were still formally at war. The fighting ended in 1648.

This canvas comes from those years and sets Cupid in triumph among the emblems of art, learning and war. The still-life passages were painted with Paul de Vos, an Antwerp specialist in animals and trophies.

The Stockholm museum also owns the small oil study made for the boy's head, a curly blond child with red cheeks, who in the big picture has been smoothed out into a golden youth. The painting itself came north through the collection of Queen Lovisa Ulrika of Sweden in the 18th century.