Why this Bizarre Painting Shows a Boy Peeing On His Mother
The symbolism of Venus and Cupid by Lorenzo Lotto
This painting is brimming with symbolism. It shows Venus reclining on a rug of blue fabric in the setting of a bower, where the goddess of Love takes shade beneath a tree.
Next to her stands her son Cupid. He is recognisable by the wings on his back and the bow slung over his shoulder from which he shoots his arrows of love.
Curiously, Cupid is shown urinating upon his mother through a ring of myrtle.
The depiction may seem puzzling to us today, but for a 16th century viewer, a urinating child would have been read as an augury of good fortune.
It is likely that the painting was intended as a wedding gift to a newly married couple. As a humorous allusion to fertility, the image was an expression of hope for the marriage: that the union would bear children.
Urinating Boy
There is actually a term for images of urinating boys like this one.
Puer mingens is Latin, made of the words puer meaning “boy” and mingens, the present participle of the verb mingere which means “to urinate”.
