Diana and Cupid

Diana has just snatched Cupid's bow, and she is holding it high above her head where the little god cannot reach it. He grabs at her arm and pushes against her lap, his wings still spread from the scramble, the golden quiver of arrows strapped across his back. Diana, goddess of hunting and famously uninterested in love, wears a small crescent moon in her hair. The message is simple and slightly comic: love has been disarmed, at least for now, and Cupid is not taking it well.

Pompeo Batoni painted this in Rome in 1761, at a time when he was the most sought-after painter in the city. Wealthy young Englishmen on the Grand Tour lined up to have him paint their portraits among classical ruins, and he churned out hundreds of them. This canvas went to one such patron, Sir Humphry Morice, a keen huntsman and devoted animal lover who left money in his will for the care of his horses and dogs. That may explain the hound sitting patiently at the left, watching the tussle with what looks like mild concern. Batoni worked in a smooth, polished late Baroque manner edging toward Neoclassicism, and the passage he clearly enjoyed most is the red drapery, which spills across the ground in folds bright enough to pull your eye straight to the center of the fight.