Venus and Mars with Cupid and the Three Graces in a Landscape

Venus reclines in a flowering meadow before a screen of trees, Mars seated opposite in armour as Cupid, blindfolded, gropes for the goddess’s garland, while the Three Graces stand bathed in light beyond — a mythological idyll of love conquering war. The son of Jacopo Tintoretto, Domenico Tintoretto painted the canvas between 1585 and 1595 in the Venetian manner he inherited from his father’s workshop; early literature gave the picture to Jacopo himself, and an inventory of 1682–83 records it in the Roman collection of the Marqués del Carpio as a work by “Domenico Tintoretto.” The picture passed through English and German collections before Charles H. Worcester presented it to the Art Institute in 1929. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.