''Venus and Cupid'' or ''Venus, Mars and Cupid'' is a c.1554 oil on canvas painting by

Lambert Sustris Lambert Sustris (c. 1515-1520 – c. 1584) was a Dutch painter active mainly in Venice. The works Sustris completed in Italy exhibit either a Mannerist style or qualities that may be deemed proto- baroque. He is also referred to as ''Alber ...

, entering the French royal collection of

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

in 1671 and now INV 1978 in the Louvre Museum, where it displayed in the Salle de la Joconde. The artist was then a studio assistant to

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...

and draws on his master's use of colour. Possibly commissioned by a member of the

Fugger The House of Fugger () is a German upper bourgeois family that was historically a prominent group of European bankers, members of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century mercantile patriciate of Augsburg, international mercantile bankers, and vent ...

banking family in

Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...

(at least two of the five paintings by Sustris acquired by Louis are definitely known to have come from Augsburg). Before Louis XIV, it was probably owned

Everhard Jabach Everhard or Eberhard Jabach (10 July 1618 – 9 March 1695) was a French businessman, art collector and director of the French East India Company. He was born in Cologne in the Holy Roman Empire but later naturalised as a French subject. Life His ...

, who seems to have owned all the Sustris works later acquired by Louis and may have bought an auction lot of works by the artist at a sale of the Fuggers' goods in Augsburg in 1650. Peltzer, Rudolf Arthur, « Lambert Sustris von Amsterdam », Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, XXXI, 1913, p. 230, n°6 p. 244 It was probably then bought from Jabach by superintendent Nicolas Fouquet, then sequestered from him under the guardianship of Charles Le Brun in 1662 and fully seized by the king nine years later.

References

{{reflist category:1554 paintings category:Paintings of Venus category:Paintings of Cupid Paintings of Mars (mythology) Paintings in the Louvre by Dutch artists category:Nude art