Venus and Cupid
John Deare
1789
Medium
Pen and black ink on cream laid paper
Dimensions
27.6 × 30.4 cm (10 7/8 × 12 in.)
Classification
drawings (visual works)
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
241061
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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 weddin...