ITALIAN OR FLEMISH, CIRCA 1600-1620

In the present bronze, a reclining Venus holds Cupid in a delicately affectionate, almost motherly, embrace. Two other casts of this bronze are known, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. A.86-1910) and in the Boston Museum of Fine Art (inv. 63.1250). The version in Museum of Fine Art was purchased at auction in the early 1960s as a work by Guglielmo della Porta. Hanns Swarzenski later argued that the bronze was the work of the major Florentine sculptor Vincenzo Danti based on a comparison with a bronze of Latona and her Children in the V & A (now catalogued as 'French, 17th Century'). Although Venus' pose can be loosely connected to Danti’s reclining figures, the cast appears inconsistent with his work. The facture of the present bronze suggests it is Italian in origin, however the figure of Venus shares similarities with the designs of Rubens, which probably explains the present tentative cataloguing of the V & A version as 'French or Netherlandish, circa 1600-1625'.