Venus and Cupid (after 1660)

Rembrandt (1606-1669)

Venus and Cupid
after 1660
Oil on canvas, 118 x 90 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Former title: Hendrickje Stoffels as Venus

For vague reasons of resemblance, the painting passes, a pure supposition of Bredius (1910), to represent Hendrickje Stoffels, the painter’s mistress, as Venus, with little Cornelia, the child she had by Rembrandt in 1654, as Cupid, a Cupid, dressed and without arrows, which also recalls a traditional iconography of the Virgin and Child (cf. Kieser). Good work as a student or follower of the master rather than an original or direct copy of a Rembrandt (disappeared) painted in the 1660s, as could have been the Venus and the Cupid from the estate of Harmen Becker in Amsterdam in 1678 (painting by Rembrandt inventoried with its copy, cf. Bredius [1910]) or the Venus and the Cupid from the Pieter Six sale, Amsterdam, 2 IX 1704, n° 51 (cf. Hofstede de Groot), the style a bit loose of the INV. 1743 prohibiting too favorable a judgment. Rather than Bol, can we not think of younger Rembranesques like Ovens or Kneller? – Another copy in the coll. Bader in Milwaukee. (Louvre)

See also:

• Stoffels, Hendrickje (1626-1663)