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The picture shows the central compartment of the ceiling decoration of the Cabinet de l'Amour in the Hôtel Lambert (the house of president Nicolas Lambert de Thorigny) in Paris.
The French noble houses followed the three-room principle of antechamber, bedchamber and "cabinet". This latter was the most intimate, but not necessarily the smallest room, usually decorated in a deliberate, original way. The decorative program was conceived to be highly meaningful. At the Hôtel Lambert Le Sueur was successively commissioned to decorate three rooms, all in the Carracci style, all with eloquent themes: a Cabinet de l'Amour (1645-47), a Chambre de Muses (1652-54) and a hidden bathroom with a highly refined ceiling (1652-55).
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