François-Guillaume MENAGEOT
1744-1816
Venus Disarming Love
Pen and brown ink over line of black chalk
266 × 191 mm, inlaid in a larger sheet
Signed in the lower left in pen and brown ink menageot, hardly decipherable annotation in the upper right in graphite, annotated in the lower right on the mount in graphite Vénus désarmant l’Amour
Watermark: Coat of arms with two-headed eagle
Provenance: Album Amicorum
Reference: N. Wilk-Brocard, François-Guillaume Ménageot 1744-1816, Paris, 1978, p. 85, n° 76
This drawing could be a preliminary to a painting now gone missing, documented in an anonymous sale which took place on December 11th, 1780 (n° 183). In the sale catalogue, the expert Jean-Baptiste Lebrun describes the composition as follows: « M. Ménageot. Two paintings. One of them depicts Vénus Disarming Love. One sees her sitting onto a red drapery, her body bent towards Love, her right arm, her thigh and a leg covered by a cloth; the background is adorned by the chariot of Venus as well as landscapes […]. »