Correggio, 'Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')', about 1525

Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')

Correggio

Not on display

About the work

Overview

A young family enjoys a tender moment in a leafy glade. Venus, goddess of love, holds her son Cupid’s bow as his father Mercury, god of communication and wit, teaches him to read. Mercury looks down fondly at his child but Venus gazes dreamily towards us and smiles. Unusually, Venus is shown with wings.

The painting was designed as one of a pair with Venus and Cupid with a Satyr (Louvre, Paris), in which a satyr draws back the cloth covering Venus and Cupid who lie fast asleep, revealing their naked bodies stretched out in voluptuous abandon. The Louvre’s painting represents the earthly Venus; the National Gallery’s painting represents the celestial Venus. The two pictures were meant to be displayed together, and an inventory of 1589 records that they were hung in a ground floor bedroom of a palace in Mantua.

‘The School of Love’ was always a very famous painting – elements from it have been copied by Titian, Annibale Carracci and Rubens.

In-depth

The scene takes place in a leafy glade. A young family enjoys a tender moment in the sunshine. Venus, goddess of love, holds her son Cupid’s bow as his father Mercury, god of communication and wit, teaches him to read. Mercury looks down fondly at his child but Venus, leaning on a broken tree trunk, gazes dreamily towards us and smiles. Her gaze is both alluring and elusive, not quite meeting our eye.

Unusually, Venus is shown with wings like her son. Her pose resembles the stance of Venus Pudica from classical statues, in which the goddess demurely conceals her private parts. Her weight is shifted onto one leg, accentuating the curve of her hip; her spot-lit breasts are pushed up by the sweep of her right arm that directs our attention down to Cupid.

The relationship of the figures to one another appears completely effortless and natural but is actually very sophisticated. The composition is based on a series of criss-crossing diagonals that run through the figures’ limbs and the tree trunks behind them. Venus’ and Mercury’s hands and lower legs echo each other in pose and position, and the line of their arms creates a graceful heart shape that ties the group together. Cupid, with the wings of a little bird (the colours of which are those of the painting – blue, white and gold), stands on the central vertical axis of the composition between his parents at the foot of the tree, the splintered wood at the top of the painting recalling his golden curls. Correggio has created a wonderful rhythm of soft, sunlit skin against the darkness from which the figures emerge, the careful balance of the composition with his soft, smoky brushwork evoking a deep sense of harmony.

The painting was designed as one of a pair with Venus and Cupid with a Satyr (Louvre, Paris), which shows Venus and Cupid lying fast asleep on the ground in a leafy glade. A grinning satyr draws back the blue cloth that has been covering them, revealing their naked bodies stretched out in the voluptuous abandon of their dreams. Correggio’s scene of the sleeping mother and child is characteristically tender and naturalistic, their fingers just touching as Cupid snuggles up to his bow on the warm fur of a lion skin. Venus‘ arm is thrown back behind her head, her pose completely open and unguarded. The scene is at once innocent and erotic, and we become voyeurs like the satyr. The Louvre’s picture represents earthly Venus and the National Gallery’s picture represents celestial Venus, and they were meant to hang together.

Originally, the paintings were almost certainly in the collection of Count Nicola Maffei (about 1487–1536) who was a close associate of Federigo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. A Maffei family inventory of 1589 records that in a ground floor bedroom of their palace in Mantua was ‘a Venus and Cupid who are asleep with a Satyr from the hand of Correggio’ and ‘a Venus who guides Cupid to school with Mercury from the hand of Correggio.’

The subject of Venus with Mercury teaching Cupid to read is rare in art. The episode is described in an allegorical romance by Francesco Colonna called the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili meaning ’Philo’s Strife of Love in a Dream‘. Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, owned a bronze sculptural group by L‘Antico of Mercury teaching Cupid to read. Correggio or his patron may have had this group in mind when deciding on the subject for this painting.

When first made, the two paintings were the same size, but ’The School of Love' is now significantly smaller than Venus with Cupid and a Satyr, having been cut down. Although the paintings were both designed to be viewed from low down, the figures in The School of Love are smaller than those in the Venus and Cupid with a Satyr, so they must have always made a slightly odd pair.

There are two surviving preparatory drawings for The School of Love, a small sketch for the figure of Cupid (British Museum, London) and a first idea for the figure of Venus (Teylers Foundation, Haarlem), suggesting that Correggio carefully planned the picture. However, X-ray images reveal that he made major alterations while painting. He changed the position of Venus’ head so that instead of looking down at Cupid she now looks dreamily at us. This way of working directly on the canvas was particularly typical of Venetian painters.

Correggio, whose real name was Antonio Allegri, was from Correggio, a small town equidistant from Mantua and Parma. His style reflects the fact that he was in the centre of the larger artistic triangle of Venice, Milan and Rome. The blurred contours, soft transitions from rosy shadows to gold and white highlights and from flesh to feather, and the elusive mood of The School of Love recall the work of the Venetian painter Giorgione. The influence of Leonardo’s Milanese works can be detected in the dreamy smiles and in Venus’ complex pose. Correggio also learned the softness of his modelling from Leonardo’s pictures but developed his own confidence and freedom in the handling of oil paint, shown in his creation of a sense of living flesh emerging from the darkness of the landscape.

It seems that The School of Love was always a very famous painting. The Venetian art dealer Jacopo Strada (portrayed by Titian), made arrangements to have it and its pair copied in Mantua in 1567. The pose of Cupid, in reverse, seems to have been copied by Titian for the Cupid in his Venus with a Mirror (National Gallery of Art, Washington). The School of Love also certainly inspired Annibale Carracci’s Toilet of Venus of the 1580s or 1590s (National Gallery, Washington), in which the pose of Venus is reused for one of the nymphs. Even Rubens, from Antwerp, quotes from the figure of Cupid in his Venus and Adonis of about 1612 (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) – he probably saw The School of Love in Mantua during his travels in Italy.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')
Artist: Correggio
Artist dates: active 1494; died 1534
Date made: about 1525
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 155.6 × 91.4 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1834
Inventory number: NG10
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Charles I, King of Great Britain

The Gonzaga family

Charles William Stewart Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry
Frame: 17th-century French Frame

Provenance

Recorded in the inventory of 1627 of the Gonzaga collection at Mantua. Though it cannot be proved that it was not identical with one of the two pictures already mentioned as in the 1607 Granvella inventory it seems more likely that it was not and that the latter were copies for the following reasons. No. 10 is undoubtedly an original by Correggio, it was at Mantua in 1627 and Correggio seems to have worked for the Mantuan court during his life time. It is therefore more reasonable to assume that it was painted for Mantua and that it stayed there than that it was painted for someone else and reached Mantua between 1607 and 1627. Equally difficult would be the hypothesis that though painted for Mantua it got into the Granvella collection at some time later in the sixteenth century and then came back to Mantua between 1607 and 1627. Purchased for Charles I in 1628 and recorded at Whitehall in van der Doort’s inventory of 1639. Valued at £800 in the Commonwealth inventory of 1649 and sold for that sum, 23rd October, 1651 to ‘Mr Baggley’. Recorded by Richard Symonds in 1651–2 in the hands of ‘the King’s Glassier’ who was offering it for sale. Purchased, 1653–4, by the Spanish ambassador in London, Alonso de Cárdenas, acting on behalf of the Conde-Duque de Olivares. When, in 1688, the daughter of Olivares’ heir, Gaspar, married the 10th Duke of Alba she brought to that house the Carpio and Olivares titles and estates, including no. 10 which was seen in the possession of the Duke of Alba by Mengs, c. 1770, and by Swinburne (book published in 1779). During the litigation between the heirs of the Duchess of Alba, who died in 1802, and the 7th Duke of Berwick and Liria (who then inherited the Alba estates and titles) no. 10 was sold by order of Charles IV of Spain to his favourite, Emmanuel Godoy, ‘Prince of the Peace’. It figures in the MS. inventory (dated 1st January, 1808) of the latter’s collection. After Godoy’s arrest in March 1808 his collection was put up for sale in the same year, but on the morning of the day appointed Joachim Murat, then military commandant of Madrid, secured for himself some of the finest pictures including no. 10, which he afterwards took with him to Naples. Taken from Naples, apparently on the night of 20th May, 1815 to Vienna by Caroline Murat who sold it there, with no. 15, to Baron Stewart, later 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, from whom both were purchased, 1834.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools’, London 1987; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2008

Correggio in Parma

Galleria Nazionale (Parma)

20 September 2008 - 25 January 2009
2016

Correggio e Parmigianino. Arte a Parma nel Cinquecento

Scuderie del Quirinale

11 March 2016 - 26 June 2016
2018

Charles I: King and Collector

Royal Academy of Arts

27 January 2018 - 15 April 2018
2023

Masterpieces from the National Gallery

Shanghai Art Museum East

17 January 2023 - 7 May 2023

National Museum of Korea

2 June 2023 - 9 October 2023

Hong Kong Palace Museum

22 November 2023 - 11 April 2024

Chimei Museum

2 May 2024 - 1 September 2024

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2005

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2005

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2007

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2007

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2008

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2008

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2008

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2008

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About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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