Friedrich Brentel (Launingen circa 1580-1651 Strasburg)

This exceptionally fresh work in bodycolor is after Abraham Bosse's etching published by Roland Le Blond circa 1634 (R.-A. Weigert, Inventaire du Fonds français, Graveurs du XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1939, I, no. 1400; Le Blanc 771). Brentel, who trained as an engraver, lavishes the same attention to detail on the architecture, costume and perspective as is found in the original etching. Bosse's prints were widely circulated and were a major source for Brentel's miniatures and larger works in bodycolor to which he dedicated himself after he gave up printmaking in the early 1620s.

While the interior of the present composition has not been associated with an actual building, the chimneypiece in the background is based on an engraving after a design by Jean Barbet from the 1633 publication Livre d'architecture d'autels et de cheminées (S. Joint-Lambert and M. Préaud, op. cit, p. 130, no. 85). Barbet's chimneypiece designs were probably not original but most likely records of those found in fashionable interiors of Parisian homes at that time. The central panel here depicts Venus and Cupid and the iconography is referred to in the inscription on the print.