Venus entrusting Cupid to Time

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This composition celebrates the birth of a child, whom Venus consigns to Saturn in his role as Father Time. The Graces sprinkle roses, and the doves that draw Venus' chariot kiss overhead. The child was once identified as Cupid, yet his lack of wings and the presence beneath him of a winged infant with a quiver play down that interpretation. On the other hand, the winged child may be delivering the sheaf of arrows—which seems too heavy for him—to the newborn. Other suggestions for the baby's identity are Venus' son Aeneas—an appropriate subject if the room contained stories from Virgil's Aeneid—or a son from the noble family that commissioned the work.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art