Venus and Cupid

The figure of Venus, goddess of love, is based on a print from Albrecht Dürer’s treatise on human proportion (Nuremberg, 1528). But Dürer’s figural ideal is transformed into something wholly original in the hands of the Master HB, a German painter known today only by his initials. HB paints the bodies of Venus and Cupid as though they are constructed of strange, tectonic shapes; their bodies twist and turn in contorted positions in a compressed space in the picture’s foreground. These unnaturally muscled bodies and mannered poses are meant by the artist to demonstrate his unique imagination and skills.