Venus at the Forge of Vulcan
The Joseph F. McCrindle Collection.
This anonymous drawing, which depicts Vulcan in his forge with Venus and Cupid assisting him by fashioning arrows, was thought to be by a sixteenth-century Flemish hand before it entered the Morgan's collection. It is now considered to have been produced in the same era, but not necessarily by a Flemish artist.<br>The drawing's trapezoidal shape suggests it was perhaps a sketch for a mural, or more likely a ceiling decoration. Depictions of this subject were a common trope during the Renaissance. A comparable drawing attributed to Gianfrancesco Penni, a member of Raphael's workshop, has a similar composition (Musée du Louvre, inv. 618). Penni's drawing was for a lost wall painting for Giovanantonio Battiferro's house in the Borgo in Rome. Images of Vulcan's forge were sometimes employed in allegories of the elements.