Pablo Picasso’s interest in returning to art of the past is seen in the present work, Venus et l’Amour Voleur de Miel, inspired by the oil panel Venus with Cupid the Honey Thief by Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1580–1620. Picasso’s dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, explained the source of the artist’s inspiration: ‘One of Picasso’s notable characteristics was his need to transform existing works of art, to compose ‘variations on a theme’, as it were. His point of departure was often simply a reproduction in a book; or even a postcard sent by myself, such as [a painting by] Cranach.’

In 1957, Pablo Picasso made a gouache painting after a published illustration of the panel, which now resides in the Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. On the reverse of the present work, the artist has inscribed the title ‘Venus et l’Amour Voleur de Miel’ and dated the work ‘Le fait [trans. “the fact”] 12.6.57 and 13.6.57’ with reference to the Lehman Collection; indicating the artist’s depiction as a direct inspiration to Cranach the Elder’s oil panel painting.

Here, the goddess Venus and her son Cupid stand beside a tree at the edge of a leafy thicket. Wearing golden neck jewellery and a large red hat over a gold-embroidered snood, Venus gazes out toward the viewer. She holds a diaphanous veil across her hips. Cupid, who carries a honeycomb taken from a hive in the tree trunk, is attacked by a swarm of bees and cries out to his mother in distress.