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| | Among the paintings by artists of the Northern School our attention is caught by 16th-century portraits that present us with upstanding burghers full of a sense of their own worth. The strict religious morality of Germany at that time found expression in the work of the celebrated Lucas Cranach the Elder. His Venus and Cupid features a Latin inscription meaning "Drive off Cupid's passion with all your might/ Otherwise your blinded soul will be possessed by Venus". In Cranach's picture the goddess is a seductress, the embodiment of dark passion. In The Judgement of Paris by the 18th-century artist Anton Raphael Mengs, Aphrodite's beauty is like the perfection of an ancient statue. Looking at her evokes lofty thoughts of the Love that rules the world. Mengs, one of the creators of Neo-Classicism, called upon the artists of Europe to return to "the simplicity and nobility of beautiful antiquity". |
