Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

Sumptuous and saucy: Compton Verney’s Cranach show reviewed

The classic Cranach nude is sly and silken with sleepy, cat-like eyes, bee-stung breasts, minxy ankles, pinchable ears

‘Lot and His Daughters’, c.1530, by Lucas Cranach the Elder. © compton verney 
issue 09 May 2020

‘Naughty little nudes,’ my history of art teacher used to say of Cranach’s Eves and Venuses. Aren’t they just? Coquettish and compact. Kenneth Clark thought they had ‘chic’. Cranach’s nudes are rarely truly naked. They wear Ascot hats, golden chokers, filmy wisps of gossamer girdle. Take the goddess in the National Gallery’s ‘Cupid Complaining to Venus’ (c.1526–7). Don’t you long for her to take off her ostrich feather hat and tickle you with it? ‘Hallo, Jungs.’ See how she plays footsie with a branch of the tree. How she brushes the back of her hand against its trunk. Note the double necklace. Always accessorise.


‘Cupid Complaining to Venus’ has been lent to Compton Verney for what promised to be an enticing spring exhibition. Cranach: Artist and Innovator, like so much else, had to close before it had opened. I snuck in the day before the grand (un)unveiling. What a sumptuous show.

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