Venus, the goddess of love, urges her son Cupid to shoot his arrow at Pluto, ruler of the underworld. Pluto thus becomes inflamed with love for Proserpine, the daughter of a god, whom he carries off to his dark underworld kingdom. The drawing served as a model for an engraving by Crispijn van de Passe the Younger. This engraving was part of a series of illustrations
for Ovid’s Metamorphoses.