Venus and Cupid

François Boucher

about 1750–1752

Black, white, red, blue, and green chalk, Chalk

J. Paul Getty Museum

A nude woman stands with a cherubic child to her left, draped in fabric. The drawing uses black, white, red, blue, and green chalk. A nude woman stands with a cherubic child to her left, draped in fabric. The drawing uses black, white, red, blue, and green chalk. The marchands-merciers of eighteenth-century Paris devised ingenious ways to adapt rare and exotic materials to tempt their clients. The dealers purchased lacquer, porcelain, and hardstone vessels or panels and sent them to craftsmen with explicit orders to create interesting and decorative designs by combining the objects with new "Voluptuousness was the essence and the soul of Boucher's art," wrote the Goncourt brothers, famous art critics of the mid-1800s. Intended to be framed and hung like a painti