Sleeping Venus (Carracci)

Sleeping Venus (also known as Sleeping Venus with Putti) is a c. 1603 painting by Annibale Carracci held by the Musée Condé in Chantilly, Oise, France. This oil painting measures 190x328cm. It depicts Venus sleeping with her arm above her head as putti frolic around her. Carracci painted Sleeping Venus for Odoardo Farnese. Giovanni Battista Agucchi wrote an ekphrasis of this painting that Carlo Cesare Malvasia included in his book Life of the Carracci. In The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Giovanni Pietro Bellori wrote a description of the painting that paraphrases Agucchi's ekphrasis without citation.