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In 1751 Francois Boucher was the favorite painter of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV and the most powerful woman at the French court. She commissioned this picture for the bathroom of Bellevue, the chateau she had just built outside Paris. Venus sits half-dressed among doves, cupids and a tumble of pink drapery and pearls, being attended to before her mirror. Everything is soft, warm and made to please. The goddess's face is idealized, yet the whole scene is really a portrait of a mood the court prized, private luxury and unhurried pleasure. Pompadour herself had played the role of Venus in a court play a few years earlier, and pictures like this hung in the small, intimate rooms where she actually lived rather than in the great state halls of Versailles.