The Bizarre Painting that Shows a Boy Peeing On His Mother
Extraordinary symbolism of an unexpected artwork
Some paintings are so extraordinary that they demand explanation.
On the surface, this image shows Venus reclining on a luxurious blue fabric in the setting of a bower, backed by a crimson curtain, with the goddess of Love taking shade beneath a tree.
Next to her stands her young son Cupid. He is identifiable 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 on his mother through a ring of myrtle leaves. And given the expression on his face, he looks rather pleased with himself.
What is his meaning, and what else does this painting, brimming with intriguing symbolism, have to tell us?
Symbolic act
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.
There is actually a term for images of urinating boys like this one. Puer mingens is Latin, made up of the word puer meaning “boy” and mingens, the present participle of the verb mingere which means “to urinate”. The meaning of such representations may range…
