Venus Disarming Cupid - Paolo Veronese, c. 1555

Venus Disarming Cupid
Paolo Veronese, c. 1555 | Oil on Canvas | Worcester Art Museum

Lustrous and layered, Venus Disarming Cupid is Paolo Veronese’s lush meditation on love—its delight, its danger, and its inevitable sorrow. Painted around 1555 by the Venetian master, the work draws directly from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, retelling the fateful myth of Venus, Cupid, Adonis, and Mars. Though the goddess tries to take Cupid’s bow in a gesture of control, the act is futile—she’s already been struck by his arrow, destined to fall for the mortal Adonis, whose tragic end is sealed.

Here, Veronese freezes the calm before heartbreak. Adonis reclines gently against Venus’s knees, her eyes shadowed with foreboding. Cupid, the mischievous catalyst, embraces a hound—a nod to Adonis’s passion for hunting and the violent end that awaits. This is the lovers’ final moment of happiness before fate intervenes.

Veronese’s brushwork is sumptuous, and the symbolism is deeply layered. The masculine anatomy of Venus’s lower arm, and the soft femininity in Cupid’s hand, offer a visual play on gender and power. Earthly desire and divine love merge and collide in a theatrical composition rich with myth, allegory, and psychological nuance.

The painting was conceived as a pendant to Cephalus and Procris (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg), both scenes unfolding from Book X of Ovid’s epic—a book devoted to love and its sudden, often cruel, interruptions.

Once owned by the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and exhibited in esteemed institutions such as The Met and the Alte Pinakothek, Venus Disarming Cupid found a permanent home in 2013 at the Worcester Art Museum, gifted by collector Hester Diamond in honor of her daughter-in-law. Today, it remains a highlight of the museum’s reimagined old master galleries—a Venetian jewel brimming with Renaissance elegance and timeless emotion.