Venus is a Roman goddess, whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles.
Lorenzo Lotto was an Italian painter, draughtsman, and illustrator, traditionally placed in the Venetian school, though much of his career was spent in other north Italian cities. He painted mainly altarpieces, religious subjects and portraits. He was active during the High Renaissance and the first half of the Mannerist period, but his work maintained a generally similar High Renaissance style throughout his career, although his nervous and eccentric posings and distortions represented a transitional stage to the Florentine and Roman Mannerists.
An epithalamium is a poem written specifically for the bride on the way to her marital chamber. This form continued in popularity through the history of the classical world; the Roman poet Catullus wrote a famous epithalamium, which was translated from or at least inspired by a now-lost work of Sappho. According to Origen, the Song of Songs might be an epithalamium on the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter.
The Rokeby Venus is a painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Completed between 1647 and 1651, and probably painted during the artist's visit to Italy, the work depicts the goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed with her back facing the viewer, and looking into a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid. The painting is in the National Gallery, London.
Sacred and Profane Love is an oil painting by Titian, probably painted in 1514, early in his career. The painting is presumed to have been commissioned by Niccolò Aurelio, a secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten, whose coat of arms appears on the sarcophagus or fountain, to celebrate his marriage to a young widow, Laura Bagarotto. It perhaps depicts a figure representing the bride dressed in white, sitting beside Cupid and accompanied by the goddess Venus.
Venus and Mars is a panel painting of about 1485 by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. It shows the Roman gods Venus, goddess of love, and Mars, god of war, in an allegory of beauty and valour. The youthful and voluptuous couple recline in a forest setting, surrounded by playful baby satyrs.
Primavera, is a large panel painting in tempera paint by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli made in the late 1470s or early 1480s. It has been described as "one of the most written about, and most controversial paintings in the world", and also "one of the most popular paintings in Western art".
Venus and Musician refers to a series of paintings by the Venetian Renaissance painter Titian and his workshop.
The Feast of Venus is an oil on canvas painting by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, created in 1635–1636, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is a fanciful depiction of the Roman festival Veneralia celebrated in honor of Venus Verticordia.
Flora or Saskia as Flora is a 1634 oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt, depicting his wife Saskia van Uylenburgh as the goddess Flora. It is held by the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Venus and Cupid (Sleeping Venus) is a circa 1626 painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Venus and Cupid is a depiction of a sleeping Venus, who reclines on a blue bed covering and rich crimson and gold tasseled pillow. She wears nothing except a thin wisp of transparent linen around her thigh. Her son Cupid fans her with richly colored peacock feathers as she drifts to sleep. He is gazing at her with an adored, raptured expression. In the background, there is a window looking out onto a moonlight landscape where a temple to the goddess lies. Venus's face has full cheeks, heavy lids, a prominent nose, and small protruding chin—all features of Gentileschi's own face. The body movements are natural: Venus's hand rests lightly on her side, her legs are gently laid together. The work blends together realism and classicism through its iconography and the artist's style.
The Pardo Venus is a painting by the Venetian artist Titian, completed in 1551 and now in the Louvre Museum. It is also known as Jupiter and Antiope, since it seems to show the story of Jupiter and Antiope from Book VI of the Metamorphoses. It is Titian's largest mythological painting, and was the first major mythological painting produced by the artist for Philip II of Spain. It was long kept in the Royal Palace of El Pardo near Madrid, hence its usual name; whether Venus is actually represented is uncertain. It later belonged to the English and French royal collections.
Cupid complaining to Venus is an oil painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Nearly 20 similar works by Cranach and his workshop are known, from the earliest dated version in Güstrow Palace of 1527 to one in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, dated to 1545, with the figures in a variety of poses and differing in other details. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that the number of extant versions suggests that this was one of Cranach's most successful compositions.
Portrait of Marsilio Cassotti and His Bride Faustina is a 1523 oil-on-panel painting by Lorenzo Lotto, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. It is signed and dated "L. Lotus Pictor / 1523". It is the first known marriage portrait produced in Italy, inspired by prints from Germany and the Low Countries.
Triumph of Chastity is an oil-on-canvas allegorical painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Lorenzo Lotto, created c. 1530, now in the Rospigliosi Pallavicini collection in Rome. It is signed at bottom right "Laurentius Lotus" and shows a female personification of Chastity (left) driving away Cupid and Venus. The Venus is based on that on an ancient Roman sarcophagus now in the Vatican Museums.
In 1635, Peter Paul Rubens created Venus and Adonis, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He followed the mythological story in the Metamorphoses by Ovid, inspired from his love of classical literature and earlier depictions of this scene. This oil on canvas painting shows Venus accompanied by Cupid, embracing and pulling Adonis before he goes off to hunt. The artist uses specific colors, detail and strong contrast between light and dark to depict a dramatic and emotional scene. At the time Rubens created the painting, the mythological story of Venus and Adonis was popular in Renaissance and Baroque court art. Rubens was clearly inspired by the many existing depictions of this scene, in particular the famous Titian composition of the same name, of which there are numerous versions. This depicts the same moment of Adonis leaving Venus to hunt, despite her pleas to stay. He is killed later in the day.
A puer mingēns is a figure in a work of art depicted as a prepubescent boy in the act of urinating, either actual or simulated. The puer mingens could represent anything from whimsy and boyish innocence to erotic symbols of virility and masculine bravado.
Sleeping Venus with Cupid is an oil on canvas painting by the French artist Nicolas Poussin. It was completed in 1630 and is now part of the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany.
Venus and Cupid with a Honeycomb is an oil painting by the German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, one of the masters of the German Renaissance. It was probably executed in 1531 after Cranach met Georg Sabinus, a German poet, diplomat and academic at the University of Wittenberg. It is displayed in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. There are twenty-four paintings on this subject, replicated many times by the painter, including Venus and Cupid with a Honeycomb which belongs to the very first series that began in 1509. Another well known versions is Cupid Complaining to Venus, dated c. 1526–27 and preserved at the National Gallery in London.
A Blonde Woman, also called Flora, is an oil painting by Palma Vecchio, dated today to around 1520, but undocumented before 1870, in the collection of the National Gallery, London.
