The only painting by Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola, Parma 1503- Casalmaggiore 1540) with a mythological subject that has come down to us is Love making the bow , now kept in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The painting represents the young Cupid who, occupying the whole scene and almost protruding from the table, in a tall and narrow format, is intent on making the bow with which he shoots his arrows of love. Cupid is represented not as a child but as a boy of great beauty and sensuality, and the figure conceived by Parmigianino was certainly inspired by the ancient Hellenistic sculptures which represented the young man with his bow. The young man appears from the shadows and turns abruptly, pointing his left leg to support the bow, on two volumes that become only an instrument, to symbolize the triumph of love and desire over reason and knowledge. The two figures that can be glimpsed under Love's legs are identified as Sacred Love/Profane Love or as the pitfalls of unrequited love that Cupid himself will soon appease with one of his arrows. The two putti bicker with each other: the male, while returning the gaze of the observer as if to make him an accomplice in his gesture, squeezes the girl tightly and takes her right wrist as if to direct her to touch Cupid, or to submit to Love.

The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Rudolf II of Habsburg for over twenty years tried to recover the original to exhibit it together with some other works with mythological subjects that he already possessed. Only at the beginning of the seventeenth century did an intermediary of the emperor Rudolf manage to buy it and the work arrived in Prague in a poor state of conservation; it was then entrusted to the court painter Joseph Heintz the Elder (Basel 1564-Prague 1609) for restoration: it seems that his attempt to restore splendor to the original had not been crowned with success and that shortly after Heintz himself had painted some full-size copies on different supports. The work in the center of the three is a copy made by Heintz the Elder himself, the two on either side are later anonymous copies.

Along with Rudolf II, of all the collectors over the centuries, Franco Maria Ricci is the only one who has managed to obtain more than one version of Cupid making the bow .