Restoration Revives Rubens’s Sensual Venus

An amorous and full-fleshed canvas of Venus and Cupid by Peter Paul Rubens has returned to the walls of Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza after an 18-month restoration.

By the museum’s own admission, the paint itself remains in good condition after more than four centuries, but layers of varnish had deteriorated and yellowed, impacting the colors of the composition. Conservators duly removed the oxidized varnish and touched up areas of the canvas, a process that has stabilized the work and “recovered the original colors used by the artist,” the museum said in a statement.

The museum also carried out a technical study on the painting, which is generally dated to 1610 to 1611. Infrared reflectography, capable of peering through layers of paint, showed a clear and unwavering underdrawing. This was hardly a surprise. Rubens’s depiction of Venus wistfully eyeing herself in Cupid’s mirror is a copy of a work by Titian, one the Fleming likely encountered in Italy or Antwerp in the first decade of the 17th century. The pearl bracelet and ring on her left finger tie it to a work that was in the Spanish royal collection, but disappeared after the Peninsular War against Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century.

By the time of this Venus and Cupid canvas—Rubens depicted the sensual allegory at least half a dozen times—he had established a large and highly organized workshop in Antwerp and was becoming one of the most in-demand painters in Northern Europe. Rubens made the image his own, as the painting’s x-ray showed. One alteration was Venus’ gaze in the mirror’s reflection. For instance, in the underdrawing, the Roman goddess of love gazes towards the viewer, but in the final version she glances to her left.

Additional lab work also shed light on Rubens’s practice. It showed a calcium carbonate layer was applied to the canvas, followed by a primer of white lead, charcoal, and more calcium carbonate. The varnish was a resin composed of rosin, obtained from pine and conifer trees, and beeswax.

Rubens was something of a Titian superfan: He copied all the Titian works owned by Philip IV during a trip to Spain in the late 1620s. The inventory of his estate at the time of his death in 1640 listed more than 30 Titian copies, as well as eight original works. The surviving Venus and Cupid depiction most similar to the one copied by Rubens belongs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

A special exhibition in room 19 of the Spanish museum, running from June 18 to September 13, presents Rubens’s Venus and Cupid alongside a digital display explaining the conservation process.