The Birth of Cupid

The picture shows the central compartment of the ceiling decoration of the Cabinet de l’Amour in the H�tel Lambert (the house of president Nicolas Lambert de Thorigny) in Paris.

The French noble houses followed the three-room principle of antechamber, bedchamber and “cabinet”. This latter was the most intimate, but not necessarily the smallest room, usually decorated in a deliberate, original way. The decorative program was conceived to be highly meaningful. At the H�tel Lambert Le Sueur was successively commissioned to decorate three rooms, all in the Carracci style, all with eloquent themes: a Cabinet de l’Amour (1645-47), a Chambre de Muses (1652-54) and a hidden bathroom with a highly refined ceiling (1652-55).