Venus and Cupid at sea

Cambiaso Luca

(Moneglia 1527 - El Escorial 1585)

Documented in the Borghese collection in 1693, and incorrectly attributed to Pomarancio, the work was painted around 1560 by the Ligurian artist Luca Cambiaso. The canvas depicts Venus, seated on an enormous shell with her back to the viewer, as she is being pulled ashore by a dolphin, in the company of her son Cupid, armed with a bow and arrows. The goddess’ unusual pose, accentuating her long voluptuous legs, the veil she holds and the milky colour of her skin seem to evoke the figure of Leucothea, the “white goddess” with beautiful ankles, described in the Odyssey (V, 424-449) as emerging from the waters to give the sacred veil to Odysseus who, at the mercy of a storm, manages to save himself thanks to this unexpected gift.

Object details

Commentary

This painting is documented as belonging to the Borghese collection since 1693 (Inv. 1693, room VI, no. 15), described in that year’s inventory as “a canvas painting of five spans depicting a Naked Woman sitting on a rock with a white cloth and a Cherub.” The work, erroneously ascribed to Pomarancio (Inv. 1693), was duly attributed to Luca Cambiaso in 1760 (De Rinaldis, 1937, p. 225) and mentioned in the fideicommissum listing of 1833 as present in the “hall of Venuses” – alongside Venus and Adonis (inv. no. 317) and Cupid at Rest (inv. n. 191) – where it is reported again in both 1859 and 1884 (Leonardi, 2007).

The canvas depicts Venus with her back turned, seated on an enormous shell, while a dolphin carries her towards the shore. Next to her is Cupid, armed with bow and arrow (for a different interpretation see Fiore, 2005). The unusual pose of the goddess, exhibiting her long, curvy legs, the veil she is holding, and the milky colour of her skin seem to evoke the figure of Leucothea, the “white goddess” with the beautiful ankles described in the Odyssey (V, 424-449) as she emerges from the water to give her sacred veil to Odysseus, who manages to survive a storm thanks to this unexpected gift. Her body “appears to be modelled on an example of Paolo [Veronese]” (Venturi, 1893) and displays – again according to Adolfo Venturi – “the sculptural fullness and the pictorial mobility of a Baroque fantasy,” which contrasts with a somewhat “plastic rigidity” (see Magnani, 1995) that bestows a certain stiffness upon the composition. As Francesca Cappelletti (1996) has duly noted, it is quite likely that Cambiaso drew inspiration from examples of Venetian painting, especially Tintoretto’s Susannas for the position of the legs, and Veronese’s Venuses for the fullness of the goddess’s body.

The contrast between the strength of the colour and the refinement of certain effects, visible according to Andrea Leonardi (2007) both in the Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene (Genoa, Palazzo Bianco) and in the two paintings in the Borghese Collection, combined with traits of pleasantness and of “dismissive ease” (see Magnani, 1995), have made it possible to set the canvas in the painter’s second manner (Calì, 1999), a time when he developed his study of the role of light and the gradual passage between chromatic effects (Bologna, 1956), observing the technique of both Roman and Venetian masters (see Fiore, 2005). The dating of the painting, initially set by Manning and Suida between 1565-68 (1958) and later postponed by the same scholars to 1568-1570 (1962), was shifted by Torriti (1970) to 1550-65 and placed by Magnani (1995) in 1559. However, according to Kristina Hermann Fiore (2005), the virtuosity and the playful atmosphere of the scene set the canvas in circa 1560.

Antonio Iommelli