Annibale Carracci, Venus decorated by the Graces, 1595 by Atelier Liesjes

About "Annibale Carracci, Venus decorated by the Graces, 1595"

by Atelier Liesjes

About the artwork

In the left half of this horizontal painting, a bare-chested, seated woman, Venus, is tended by three nude women and several child-like, nude, winged putti. All the women and putti have pale, peachy skin. To our right, a statue of a man stands on an ornately carved pedestal on a veranda in front of a distant landscape. Venus sits facing our right and she looks into a rectangular, black-framed mirror she holds up with her left hand. Her blond hair is braided and she has delicate features. A sky-blue cloth wraps around her waist and lap, and covers her legs. One foot rests on the lap of a seated putto, who ties on a sandal. Another putto helps hold up the mirror. A third putto near us, in front of Venus, pulls strings of pearls from a gold box and the fourth, in the lower left corner, lifts a comb and long needle out of a gilded, rectangular box. Two of the women behind Venus tend to her hair and the third holds up and gazes at a teardrop-shaped pearl. A dusky rose-pink curtain falls behind the women and putti. The view opens onto a terrace on the right half of the painting. A gray stone sculpture of a nude man holding up a bunch of grapes with one hand and bracing a tall stick with the other stands facing our left on an ornately carved base. The base is made up of a wide, shallow bowl above a single pedestal foot. In the distance, two people sit against a tall balustrade. The person on the left wears gold-colored armor, a helmet, and holds a long spear. The bearded man to the right appears to be nude as he leans to the side toward his companion, resting his hand and chin along a staff propped on the bench's seat. Trees and mountains in the landscape beyond are painted with brown, deep gray, and forest and sage green. A sliver of white sky along the horizon brightens an otherwise steel-gray sky.

Annibale Carracci (Bologna, 3 november 1560 – Rome, 15 juli 1609) was een Italiaans kunstschilder en graveur. In Bologna opende hij, samen met zijn neef Ludovico en broer Agostino de Eclectische School of de "School van Carracci". Hij was een van de grondleggers van de kunststroming die bekend is geworden als de Bolognese School.

De werken van Annibale Carracci behoren tot de