Venus and Cupid,

1506

A close contemporary of Albrecht Dürer, Cranach spent most of his career as court painter to the Elector of Saxony in Wittenberg, who granted him the coat of arms—a winged serpent with the artist’s initials—that appears in this print, prominently suspended from a tree branch. As in his nearby painting of the same theme, Cranach accentuated Venus’s nudity with a necklace. He also included a clever visual conceit at the lower right, within the rolling waves at her feet: a conch shell, one of the principal attributes of the seafoam-born goddess, who gently restrains Cupid from shooting his arrow.