Allegoria with Venus and Cupid, Anolo Bronzino 
- Posted by Anolo Bronzino
- Museum: National Gallery (London)
- Year: Between 1540-1550
Overview of the painting :
Allegoria with Venus and Cupid – Anolo Bronzino. Between 1540-1550.
Bronzino served as a court painter at Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany. A painting written around 1540-1550., is a masterpiece of diversity and intrigue, since here male and female figures of all ages are placed in a shallow perspective throughout the canvas, which makes the eye zigzag-like move from one part of the composition to another. Together, these figures form an allegory dedicated to the destructive power of love.
In the center, naked Venus squeezes a golden apple in his left hand – a reward that caused the Trojan War; with her right hand, she disarm Cupid, eroticly hugging her and almost crushing the blue of the world with her right foot. On the right, a playful little boy is going to shower them with pink petals, not noticing that he is stepping on thorns, one of which has already pierced his right foot. Behind him, a beautiful girl stretches out honey honeycombs, but her generous gesture is a hoax, since in the other hand holds the sting of her snake tail.
In the background, the Elder-Time, which is watched by a masked figure, carries his hourglass on his back and tries to either cover this group of figures, or to find harmful forces hidden in them in front of the viewer; and on the left, the man grabbed his head with his hands and groans with pain tormented by madness.
BOMAN. In an allegorical picture of Bronzino, Cheating, or Inflattery, appears in the guise of a beautiful young girl, the lower part of the body of a reptiles and the legs of a lion. Cheating can also be depicted in painting using a mask – for example, in the form of an old woman who put on the guise of a young girl.
DEPOSIT. In the Middle Ages, the jesters were recognized as “fools” in monarchs and nobles. In the picture of Giotto Stupidity (approx. 1310) she is portrayed as a fat young man in a crown of feathers and a torn tunic holding a baton. At Bronsino, Stupidity personifies a smiling boy with bells around the ankle, like a jester, about to sprinkle Venus with petals. In the book of satirical poems, the Ship of Fools (1494) of the German poet Sebastian Brant (1458-1521) describes how a bunch of all kinds of fools set sail to the Land of Fools without a pilot and cards. This satire for human sinfulness and stupidity has become the subject of many allegorical works, including the Ship of Fools of Bosch (approx. 1495).