(piano music playing)
Steven: We're in the National Gallery of Washington, D.C.,
and we're looking at Franรงois Boucher's
Venus Consoling Love. This is a painting that probably
dates to 1751 and it's a confection. Look at it.
Beth: It is. We see Venus occupying a diagonal line
in the center of the canvas.
Steven: Which reminds us that it comes out of the
Beth: Baroque
Beth: Yeah, lovely nude Venus who has got her left arm
coming across her body and trying to steal all the
arrows from Cupid, so he can't ...
Steven: ... do mischief ...
Beth: Do mischief making people fall in love.
Steven: The arrow, the spark of desire that he wields.
Beth: Yeah and there's sorts of soft greens and blues
and pinks that we associate with the Rococo style.
Steven: There's a willingness to sort of suspend belief
and to create a kind of fantasy, to create a kind of
impossible dream-like space. Look at this landscape.
It's in and out of focus. It dissolves. We have this
large tree here in of the center, which is slightly to the
right background, but then the distant trees as well
and ... and there's no real space in between them.
Beth: No, that's not a real construction of space.
Steven: No, not at all.
Beth: It's a kind of evoking of nature and landscape.
Steven: It's meant to be a kind of playful
indulgent expression of wealth thinned of emotion
and of love and desire.
Beth: And of course, this was commissioned by
Madame de Pompadour?
Steven: ... who was the mistress of the king
and there's even some suggestion that it was possibly
her that posed for Venus, although I think ...
Beth: It's just that she's a very idealized woman.
Steven: Yeah, I think that's probably true,
but it speaks a lot to ... to the interest of the moment.
You know, this is a period before the French Revolution,
where painting was concerned with ... with emotion, was
concerned with the kind of indulgence ... was
concerned with other pleasures of the body.
(piano music playing)