Unlike the Death of Dido plaquette (cat. 5, 44.593), in which the scene is set against a landscape background, in the Venus Chastising Cupid the two figures are in a neutral setting, which serves to highlight the dynamism of the scene, the full and firm body of the goddess contrasting with the twisting and floating drapery. It is regarded by many scholars as, to use the words of Seymour de Ricci, “one of the most beautiful of all Italian plaquettes.”²

The Venus Chastising Cupid is known in two variants, of which the Houston plaquette is in the second group. In the first version, Cupid’s left hand is empty and his arm is held out, whereas in the second he clutches an arrow, holding his arm to his side. The second version clarifies that Venus’s displeasure has been provoked by her son having loosed off one arrow too many, striking Venus and Mars, and thus exposing Venus’s husband Vulcan to ridicule among the gods. There are many instances in Hellenistic art and literature of the tortured Cupid, but hardly any in which Venus attacks her son in an aggressive manner. Nevertheless, the subject does appear in one poem entitled Cupido cruciator (c. AD 380–83), by the Latin poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius,³ which seems to have been well known in fifteenth-century Italy, and so may well have been the source for the plaquette. In Ausonius’s poem, Cupid is crucified by a group of women who have been driven mad by love, not of their own free will but because of Cupid’s actions. As the lovelorn women gather around Cupid, his mother makes her way through the crowd. Remembering that she too had been her son’s victim, being caught by her husband in flagrante with Mars and paraded in disgrace before the gods, she beat the boy with a golden wreath, causing him to cry and to fear further punishment.

The first version is known from examples in the Staatliche Museen Berlin,⁴ and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.⁵ In addition to the Houston example, there are four versions known of the second variant, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London;⁶ the Art, Design & Architecture Museum of the University of Santa Barbara;⁷ the Museo Correr, Venice;⁸ and the Scaglia collection.⁹ The Venice example is critical for the attribution of the plaquette, since it bears on the reverse the inscription “R^OI.” This inscription is found on isolated examples of a number of plaquettes associated with Andrea Riccio, to whom the Venus Chastising Cupid is attributed by most scholars.

Andrea Briosco’s nickname, Riccio, which translates as “hedgehog” or “curly-head,” refers to his prominent mop of close-curled hair, seen in the tiny self-portraits he inserted into a few of his reliefs or also produced as independent bronzes. The greatest maker of small bronzes in the early Renaissance, Riccio grew up and spent his entire career in Padua. At first apprenticed within his father's workshop, he went on to train as a sculptor in bronze and terracotta in the workshop of Bartolommeo Bellano, who had been an assistant of Donatello. His most important work is the enormous Paschal Candelabrum, commissioned by the authorities of the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua (the Santo) in 1507 but not completed until 1516. Riccio’s close associations with the humanist circles in and around the University of Padua are reflected in the sophisticated intellectual content of much of his work, as well as in his empathy with the pagan world, best seen in his bronze statuettes and plaquettes, many of which have complex and obscure allegorical meanings that are largely lost to us today. The Venus Chastising Cupid is by comparison a relatively conventional work. It was discussed by Planiscig in his monograph on Riccio, where he suggested that it showed the influence on Riccio’s work of Giorgione (c. 1484–1510).¹⁰ There are certainly resonances between the elegant figure of Venus and the woman on the extreme left of the painting of the Concert Champêtre in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, traditionally attributed to Giorgione but now more often thought to be the work of the young Titian. This type of twisting female body in fact seems to have enjoyed a certain popularity among early sixteenth-century artists. There are also for example quite close similarities with the figure of Venus in an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, depicting Venus with Cupid within a niche.,¹¹ However, by far the closest parallel with the plaquette is a presumably ancient cornelian gem, known from the cast published by James Tassie, in which the figures of Venus and Cupid are all but identical.¹²

The subject is rare in painting and sculpture around 1500, although it would become more popular from the later sixteenth century. There is a bronze statuette in the Stiftsmuseum in Klosterneuburg, which Planiscig catalogued as the work of Riccio,¹³ but is now thought to be an anonymous early sixteenth-century Paduan work.¹⁴ The early sixteenth-century theorist Pomponius Gauricus, in his important tract De Sculptura, published in 1504, mentioned a now lost statue of the subject by the Venetian sculptor Zuan Zorzi Lascaris, known as Pyrgoteles (fl. before 1496, died possibly 1531), which seems to have been famous in Venice at the end of the fifteenth century.¹⁵ It is likely to have been based on the episode recounted by Ausonius, so might have served as the indirect model for the plaquette design.

Although most scholars, from Molinier onward,¹⁶ have been happy to accept the Venus Chastising Cupid as the work of Riccio, Bertrand Jestaz and Manfred Leithe-Jasper have both questioned this. In an important article,¹⁷ Jestaz examined the plaquettes apparently signed in some form by Riccio, correctly noting that most actually have rather little in common with those works that can be securely attributed to the sculptor, indeed in some cases would probably not have been associated with Riccio, had it not been for the presence of the “signature.” So far as the Venus Chastising Cupid was concerned, Jestaz commented that the full body of the woman and her extreme torsion were without parallel elsewhere in the work of Riccio, but were rather closer stylistically to his Paduan contemporary Gian Maria Mosca, called Padovano (c. 1493/5–after March 1574).¹⁸ Mosca is generally regarded as the maker of most of a series of small marble reliefs depicting figures from classical mythology within stylized and rather abstract settings.¹⁹ The Venus Chastising Cupid is certainly closer conceptually and stylistically to the reliefs attributed to Mosca, than to Riccio’s characteristic secure works, as Manfred Leithe-Jasper implicitly accepted in his recent reassessment of Riccio as a maker of plaquettes.²⁰

We know nothing about Riccio’s workshop and how it was composed and functioned, other than that his father, Ambrogio di Cristoforo (died 1525), was a goldsmith and that Riccio worked in some way with him,²¹ as did Riccio’s two brothers Battista and Galvano. Perhaps some form of joint workshop operated in which small reliefs designed by other members of the workshop or even other artists, such as Mosca, were issued bearing Riccio’s signature as a type of workshop mark. In the present state of knowledge, it seems best to regard works such as the Venus Chastising Cupid as, in this sense, probable workshop products.

The first mention of the plaquette comes in a letter of July 14, 1935, when Leo Planiscig reported that Simon Meller had brought it to him, when stopping over in Vienna during his return to Budapest from a trip to London. It is possible therefore that Meller had acquired the plaquette shortly beforehand in London, although it was not in the important sale of medals and plaquettes from the Heseltine collection held on May 29, 1935.²² Planiscig declared it “first-class!” (erstklassig) and suggested that it would make an excellent companion to the relief of Dido that Straus had bought a couple of years earlier. Meller wanted 30,000 francs for the piece, but Planiscig felt sure he would accept an offer of 20,000, volunteering to negotiate on Straus’s behalf. Writing a few weeks later, Planiscig wrote that he had successfully beaten down the unfortunate Meller: “I didn’t waste time with him but straight away offered 20 and remained hard and immovable; I had the advantage that I had the object in my possession in the museum. Today I have received a letter in which he capitulates.”²³ Meller wrote to Straus on August 11, “When you actually have the piece in your hand and have seen the fineness of the chasing and the wonderful patina, you will understand why I was asking that price. But Planiscig fought very energetically on your behalf.”²⁴ Planiscig arranged for the plaquette to be sent to Straus but explained that he could not be seen to be the vendor, so would record it simply as a gift from him.

—Jeremy Warren