François Boucher

The oval is the clue: pictures shaped like this were usually made to fit a panel over a door or a fireplace, ordered as part of the decorating rather than hung on a nail. From what I've read this one came with a companion piece the same size.

Shepherds and shepherdesses were a craze in France at the time — pastoral plays and operas everywhere, and painters selling the same daydream for the wall. Nobody buying one expected real farm work to look like this. I couldn't find who ordered this particular one.

The setup is Venus taking the arrows off Cupid so he can't fire them at anyone. Painted, apparently, for the king's mistress, who bought a lot of pictures like this — mythology was the standard licence for a nude in a respectable room.

This was the last in a run of seven portraits the same painter made of her over the years. It hung at Versailles first, then apparently passed down to her brother.

By the time this was made, critics had started turning on this sort of thing — Diderot went after it in print, supposedly, for being pretty and false. Buyers carried on wanting it regardless.