Cupid the Honey Thief

Cupid is shown fleeing from a wooden bench holding three straw beehives, his body covered in stinging bees after stealing honey. To the right, Venus stands in a flowing classical robe, holding a flaming torch and pointing a finger toward the suffering child. Cupid's bow and quiver lie abandoned on the ground in the foreground of a sparse landscape.

This work illustrates a theme from Theocritus (Idyll XIX), comparing the physical pain of a bee sting to the emotional sting of love, a central motif in Renaissance Neoplatonic thought regarding the 'bittersweet' nature of Eros. It reflects the humanist project of recovering classical Hellenistic poetry to create moralizing allegories about the hazards of human passion.