In the 1580s, Cornelis van Haarlem, together with the poet, painter and art theorist, Karel van Mander, and the painter and engraver, Hendrick Goltzius, was one of the principal exponents of the Mannerist style which enjoyed a brief but intense flowering in Haarlem. By 1622, the date of this picture, Cornelis had abandoned the extreme Mannerism of the Haarlem Academy and turned toward a more temperate approach. The violent contortions and exaggeratedly muscular nudes which typified his earlier style gave way to restful poses and figure types, more akin to classical ideals of proportion and harmony. Here he presents an elegant Venus and Cupid posed nude in a landscape, Cupid looking up at Venus as she gestures with her right hand. Venus's gentle contrapposto pose and graceful proportions reflect the ideals of the Renaissance and artists like Albrecht Dürer, rather than the mannerists to whom van Haarlem is more commonly associated. A painting by the artist of Adam and Eve, from the same year, is in the Hamburger Kunsthalle and shares a similar palette and compositional style (fig. 1).