Cupid Disarmed (Watteau)

Cupid Disarmed (c. 1715) attributed to Jean-Antoine Watteau

Cupid Disarmed (L'Amour désarmé) is a c. 1715 oil-on-canvas painting, usually but not definitively attributed to Antoine Watteau. It is one of eight paintings kept by Watteau's friend and protector Jean de Jullienne until the latter's death in 1766. Benoît Audran engraved it in 1727 and described and reproduced it in an inventory of the Jullienne collection in 1756. After Jullienne's death the art dealer Boileau bought it for Jean-Baptiste de Montullé, Jullienne's executor.

It was sold again in 1783 and seems to have been sold from the hôtel Bullion to a British collector after the Reign of Terror, before returning to France just before 1848. It then entered the collection of the marquis de Maison, with which it was bought by Henri d'Orleans, Duke of Aumale in 1868, who hung it in the salle de la Tribune in his château de Chantilly. It still forms part of the Musée Condé.

Topic

It is one of the rare mythological paintings painted by Watteau, representing Venus grasping Cupid's bow. One hypothesis is that it was painted at the time of the reception of the painter at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. According to Pierre-Jean Mariette, Watteau was inspired by a drawing by Paul Veronese which had belonged to Pierre Crozat then to Mariette himself and which is now kept in the Louvre museum.

By its format and its characters, the painting has also been compared to another painting by Watteau: Autumn, which is also kept at the Louvre.

There are many replicas of it. It is a relatively common theme in academic painting, taken up by François Boucher in 1751.

Further reading

• Adhémar, Hélène (1950). Watteau; sa vie, son oeuvre (in French). Includes "L’univers de Watteau", an introduction by René Huyghe. Paris: P. Tisné. cat. no. 177. OCLC 853537.
• Bergeret, Pierre Nolasque (1848). Lettres d'un artist... Paris: Chez l'auteur. pp. 334–335 – via the Internet Archive.
• Brinckmann, Albert Erich (1943). J. A. Watteau (in German). Wien: A. Schroll & Company. fig. 24. OCLC 905437559.
• Brookner, Anita (1985) [1967]. Watteau. Colour Library of Art. Feltham: Hamlyn. p. 29; colorpl. 12. ISBN 0-600-50156-6. OCLC 922565837 – via the Internet Archive.
• Camesasca, Ettore [in Portuguese] (1971). The Complete Paintings of Watteau (loan required). Classics of the World's Great Art. Introduction by John Sunderland. New York: Harry N. Abrams. p. 108–109, cat. no. 124. ISBN 0810955253. OCLC 143069 – via the Internet Archive.
• Dacier, Émile; Vuaflart, Albert (1922). "Jean de Julienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIII-e siècle. III. Catalogue". Jean de Jullienne et les Graveurs de Watteau Au Xviii. Siècle (in French). Paris: M. Rousseau. cat. no. 87. doi:10.11588/DIGLIT.41977. OCLC 1039156495.
• Ferré, Jean, ed. (1972). Watteau (in French). Madrid: Éditions Athena. cat. no. A18. OCLC 906101135.
• Ferré, Jean (1979). Watteau (artbook). Paris: Editions de Vergennes. p. 26. OCLC 1151684010 – via the Internet Archive.
• Garnier-Pelle, Nicole (1995). Chantilly, musée Condé. Peintures du xviiie siècle. Inventaire des collections publiques de France (in French). Vol. 38. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. pp. 148–150; cat. no. 110. OCLC 33264438.
• Goncourt, Edmond de (1875). Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau (in French). Paris: Rapilly. p. 43, cat. no. 33. OCLC 1041772738 – via the Internet Archive.
• Gruyer, François-Anatole (1898). La peinture au chateau de Chantilly. Vol. 2: École française (in French). Paris: Plon-Nourrit. pp. 260–263, cat. no. CXIII. OCLC 1048229654 – via the Internet Archive.
• Gruyer, François-Anatole (1899). Chantilly, Musée Condé. Notice des peintures (in French). Paris: Braun, Clément et cie. p. 342, cat. no. 369 – via the Internet Archive.
• Hattori, Cordélia (2010). "Jean-Baptiste François de Montullé (1721-1787). Collectionneur de Watteau, van Loo, Greuze, Vernet, etc". Les Cahiers d'Histoire de l'Art. 8: 49–67.
• Hédouin, Pierre [in French] (November 30, 1845). "Watteau: catalogue de son oeuvre". L'Artiste (in French). pp. 78–80 – via Gallica. p. 78, cat. no. 15{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Hédouin, Pierre (1856). Mosaïque. Peintres, musiciens, littérateurs, artistes dramatiques à partir du 15e siècle jusqu'à nos jours (in French). Paris: Heugel. p. 95, cat. no. 15. OCLC 1157159285 – via the Internet Archive.
• Institut de France, Paris (1979). Peintures célèbres du Musée Condé. Chantilly: Institut de France. p. 34. OCLC 26209642.
• Mathey, Jacques (1959). Antoine Watteau. Peintures réapparues inconnues ou négligées par les historiens (in French). Paris: F. de Nobele. p. 68. OCLC 954214682.
• Montagni, E. C. (1968). L'opera completa di Watteau. Classici dell'arte (in Italian). Vol. 21. Introduction by Giovanni Macchia. Milano: Rizzoli. p. 107; cat. no. 124. OCLC 1006284992. For the English edition, see Camesasca 1971.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
• Posner, Donald (1984). Antoine Watteau. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 79. ISBN 0-8014-1571-3. OCLC 10736607 – via the Internet Archive.
• Réau, Louis (1928–1930). "Watteau". In Dimier, Louis (ed.). Les peintres français du XVIII-e siècle: Histoire des vies et catalogue des œuvres (in French). Vol. 1. Paris: G. Van Oest. p. 30, cat. no. 9. OCLC 564527521.
• Roland Michel, Marianne (1984). Watteau (in French). Paris: Flammarion. pp. 151, 221, 266, 269, 273. ISBN 9782080120205. OCLC 417153549.
• Rosenberg, Pierre (May 1993). "Une Note sur L'Amour desarmé". Le Musée Condé (44): 1–4.
• Temperini, Renaud (2002). Watteau. Maîtres de l'art (in French). Paris: Gallimard. p. 58, cat. no. 48. ISBN 9782070116867. OCLC 300225840.
• Wilenski, Reginald Howard (1931). French Painting. Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint. pp. 113–114 n. 2. OCLC 1045602541 – via the Internet Archive.
• Zimmermann, E. Heinrich [in German] (1912). Watteau: des Meisters Werke in 182 Abbildungen. Klassiker der Kunst (in German). Vol. 21. Stuttgart, Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. pp. 49, 187. OCLC 561124140.

External links

• Eidelberg, Martin (December 2014). "L'Amour désarmé". A Watteau Abecedario. Archived from the original on October 17, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.