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View at the museum ↗Venus and Cupid
John Deare1789
- Attribution
- John Deare English, 1759-1798
- Medium
- Pen and black ink on cream laid paper
- Physical dimensions
- 27.6 × 30.4 cm (10 7/8 × 12 in.)
- Credit line
- The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Endowment Fund
Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.
Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
John Deare, one of the finest British sculptors of the late 1700s, was also a superb draftsman. Venus and Cupid is a highly finished study for a relief sculpture of the same subject (now in the Cliffe Castle Museum in Yorkshire). Consistent with his profession, Deare’s drawing technique is characterized by severe linearity, minimal shading, and a frieze-like arrangement of figures, as though the whole were carved from a block of stone. Cupid holds an outsize butterfly, an allusion to his wedding to Psyche. In Neoplatonic philosophy, the butterfly signifies the immortality of the soul. Gazing intensely into Cupid’s eyes, Venus expresses maternal affection while at the same time registering an erotic charge.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0