(Graz 1703–1761 Vienna)
Apollo and Cupid,
oil on copper, 12.3 x 9.7 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Austria

In the present copper painting by the Austrian Baroque painter Franz Christoph Janneck, Apollo is depicted instructing Cupid how to shoot an arrow. Apollo was the Greek god of archery, whose status as such led to conflict with the Cupid, who believed that he himself should have been made patron of archery, due to his superior skill with the bow and arrow. According to the Greek myth, Apollo insults Cupid, who returns later to seek his revenge, armed with two arrows: one made of gold that inspired love and one made of lead that inspired hatred. Cupid shoots Apollo with the golden arrows causing him to fall in love with the river nymph Daphne, who in turn is shot with the lead arrow, thus causing her to hate Apollo.

Like his painter colleague Johann Georg Platzer, Janneck painted cabinet pictures illustrating genre scenes as well as religious and mythological themes. The German art historian and collector Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn (1712–1780) especially appreciated Janneck as an artist and expert. He owed to him parts of the information about artists published in his writings and commissioned from him pictures depicting painter’s and sculptor’s studios into which Janneck incorporated portraits of himself and of his colleagues Josef Orient (1677–1747), Franz Canton (1678–1733), and Maximilian Joseph Schinnagl (1697–1762), as well as the sculptor Michael Ignaz Gunst (1688–1728).