Venus and Cupid, Lucas Cranach the Elder
Venus, the goddess of love, leans against a leafy tree while her son Cupid, the god of desire, tries to get her attention. Clutching a stolen honeycomb, he complains as bees swarm and sting him – but Venus is uninterested in her son. Instead, her attention is directed towards us.
The Latin inscription on the tree trunk explains Venus' lack of concern for her son, as well as the moral of the picture: brief and fleeting pleasure is mingled with sadness and pain. It alludes to the sting of Cupid’s arrows of love, which cause a more enduring agony than any bee sting.
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