Venus and Mars, c 1485. Tempera and oil on poplar panel, 69 cm x 173 cm. National Gallery, London
Venus and Mars (or Mars and Venus) is a panel painting of about 1485 by the Italian RenaissancepainterSandro Botticelli.[2] 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.
The painting was probably intended to commemorate a wedding, set into panelling or a piece of furniture to adorn the bedroom of the bride and groom,[3] possibly as part of a set of works. This is suggested by the wide format and the close view of the figures. It is widely seen as representation of an ideal view of sensuous love. It seems likely that Botticelli worked out the concept for the painting, with its learned allusions, with an advisor such as Poliziano, the Medici house poet and Renaissance Humanist scholar.[4]
The exact date of Venus and Mars is not known, but the National Gallery's dated the painting to "c.1485" in 2017.[5] Scholar Ronald Lightbown dates it to "probably around 1483", while art historians Leopold and Helen Ettlinger date the painting to "the latter half of the 1480s".[6] All dates depend on analysis of the style, as the painting has not been convincingly tied to a specific date or event, such as a wedding.[7] It likely comes a few years after the Primavera and Pallas and the Centaur (both about 1482) and around the time of The Birth of Venus (c.1486).[8] It is the only one of these paintings not in the Uffizi in Florence; it has been in the National Gallery in London since 1874.
Description
Infant satyr and landscapeMars, with the wasp's nest on the right
Venus watches Mars sleep while two infant satyrs play,[9] carrying his helmet (a sallet) and lance as another rests inside his breastplate under his arm. A fourth blows a small conch shell in his ear in an effort, so far unsuccessful, to wake him. The clear implication is that the couple have been making love; the male habit of falling asleep after sex was a regular subject for ribald jokes in the context of weddings in Renaissance Italy.[10] The lance and conch can be read as sexual symbols.[11]
The scene is set in a grove of myrtle, traditionally associated with Venus and marriage, or possibly laurel, associated with Lorenzo de' Medici (il Magnifico), or perhaps both plants.[12] There is a limited view of the meadow beyond, leading to a distant walled city.[3]
In the foreground, a swarm of wasps hovers around Mars' head, possibly as a symbol that love is often accompanied by pain.[13] Another explanation, first suggested by Ernst Gombrich,[14] is that the wasps represent the Vespucci family that may have commissioned the painting.[15] They had been neighbours of Botticelli since his childhood, and had commissioned his Saint Augustine in His Study for the Ognissanti church in 1480, probably in addition to other commissions. Their coat of arms included wasps, as their name means "little wasps" in Italian,[16] and the wasps' nest, in a hollow in the tree in the top right corner, is exactly in the place in the panel where the coat of arms of a patron was often painted.[17]
The painting is thought originally to have been set into panelling as a spalliera, or part of furniture such as a bed, the back of a lettuccio, a wooden sofa, or a similar piece.[18]
Ronald Lightbown describes Mars as "Botticelli's most perfect male nude", though there are not really a large number of these; he was less interested in perfecting the anatomy of his figures than many of his Florentine contemporaries, but seems to have paid special attention to it here.[19] The Venus here, unlike in the artist's Birth of Venus, is fully clothed, as she is in marital mode. This despite Venus being the wife of Vulcan, making the relationship adulterous by normal human standards.[20] In Greek Neoplatonism, Harmony was the daughter of their union.[21] Other late classical sources regarded Cupid as a child of the union.
Interpretation
Venus
The usual view of scholars is that the painting was commissioned to celebrate a marriage, and is a relatively uncomplicated representation of sensual pleasure, with an added meaning of love conquering or outlasting war.[22] This was a commonplace in Renaissance thinking, which might be elaborated in terms of Renaissance Neoplatonism.[23] As with the other mythologies, Ernst Gombrich and Edgar Wind were the first to analyse the painting in these terms. The couple's relationship could also be considered in terms of astrology, in which Mars is, according to Marsilio Ficino, "outstanding in strength among the planets, because he makes men stronger, but Venus masters him ...she seems to master Mars, but Mars never masters Venus".[24]
The Victorian critic John Addington Symonds, without disagreeing with that interpretation, thought the newly fashionable Botticelli overrated and "harboured an irrational dislike for the picture", writing that "The face and attitude of that unseductive Venus... opposite her snoring lover, seems to symbolize the indignities which women have to endure from insolent and sottish boys with only youth to recommend them."[25]
One dissenting interpretation is from Charles Dempsey, who finds a more sinister meaning in the picture, with the little satyrs as incubi who torment sleepers, provoking "sexual terrors in the dreams of those bound in a state of sensual error and confusion." He concludes that "The idea of love here invested in Venus seems to be revealed, not in a positive celebration of the spirit animating natural life shown in the Primavera and Birth of Venus but as an empty sensual fantasy that disarms and torments the slumbering spirit of a once virile martial valour.[26]
The work is agreed by all to draw on the description by Lucian, a poet in Greek of the 2nd-century AD, of a famous painting, now lost, by Echion of the wedding ceremony of Alexander the Great and Roxana. The ancient painting probably adapted iconography associated with Venus and Mars to the historical Alexander and his bride. Lucian's ekphrasis or description mentions amoretti or putti playing with Alexander's armour during the ceremony, two carrying his lance and one who has crawled inside his breastplate.[27]
This is taken both as evidence of Botticelli's collaboration with Humanist advisors with the full classical education that he lacked, and his keenness to recreate the lost wonders of ancient painting, a theme in the interpretation of several of his secular works, most clearly in the Calumny of Apelles, which also uses Lucian.[28] A Roman sarcophagus in the Vatican is carved with a similar Mars and Venus reclining, accompanied by putti.[29]
The position of the main figures reflects the description of them by Lucretius in de rerum natura ("The Nature of Things"):[30] "though Mars the War Lord rules war’s savage works, yet often he throws himself into your arms, faint with love’s deathless wound, and there, with arching neck bent back, looks up and sighs, and feeds a lustful eye on you and, pillowed, dangles his life’s breath from your lips. Then, as he falls back on your sacred body, Lady, lean over and let sweet utterance pour from your holy lips—a plea of peace for Rome."[31]
Detail from bottom right
In 2010, the plant held by the satyr in the bottom right corner of the painting was tentatively identified by the art historian David Bellingham as the fruit of Datura stramonium or thorn apple. This plant, often referred to as "poor man's acid", has properties likened to a mixture of opium and alcohol, and may cause fainting or drowsiness as its effects wear off.[32] Others question how this plant, normally considered a native only of North America, might have reached Italy by the 1480s, and dismiss the idea.[33] However, in 2017 the National Gallery website endorsed the identification as a "thorn apple".[34]
Bellingham suggests that the growing plant in the bottom right corner is a species of aloe, credited by the Greeks with medicinal powers, as well as offering protection against evil spirits and enhancing sexual excitement.[35] Bellingham proposes several layers of identification for the figures, generating different meanings. These include the couple as Adam and Eve.[36]
Possible models
As with many other of Botticelli's secular paintings, leading figures from Florentine high society have been proposed as the models for the figures. Giuliano di Piero de' Medici has been proposed as the athletic model for Mars and, almost inevitably, it has been suggested that Venus has the face of Simonetta Vespucci, a great beauty of the time, married to the cousin of Amerigo Vespucci. Giuliano di Piero de' Medici's candidacy as a model for Mars is somewhat problematic as he was assassinated in 1478, which is 5 years prior to the earliest date of the painting creation (1483). Simonetta Vespucci has been suggested as the model or inspiration for a great number of Botticelli's beauties, whose features by no means all have a close resemblance to each other.[37]
Wilhelm von Bode (d. 1929) first proposed the pair as the models in this painting; in his interpretation, Mars is tired after jousting, and Venus appears to him in a dream, as his prize.[38] Giuliano had chosen Simonetta as his "lady" in a famous joust in 1475, organized by his older brother Lorenzo de' Medici ("Lorenzo il Magnifico"), the effective ruler of Florence to celebrate a treaty with Venice and Milan. This lavish public show was commemorated in the poem by Poliziano, the Medici court poet, known as the Stanze or la Giostra ("Verses" or "The Joust"),[39] giving a detailed account, including a description of Giuliano's banner with an image of Pallas Athene, which was painted by Botticelli.[40]
Many later commentators have probably taken this scripted display of Petrarchancourtly love using the beautiful young wife of a political ally over-literally, generating a legend of an actual affair between the two. It is unlikely that any such affair took place; Giuliano's actual mistress, Fioretta Gorini, was well known (and their son became Pope Clement VII). Both Giuliano and Simonetta had been dead for several years when this painting was made: Simonetta died in 1476 at 22, and Giuliano had been assassinated in 1478 in the Pazzi conspiracy.[41]
Detail of Mars
Stanze 122 describes how the hero found Venus "seated on the edge of her couch, just then released from the embrace of Mars, who lay on his back in her lap, still feeding his eyes on her face". However, the description, with Mars in Venus' lap, gazing up at her, is a poor fit to the painting. Poliziano was one of the humanist scholars in the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, and his stanze recount Giuliano di Piero de' Medici's prowess in a jousting tournament. The ultimate source for Poliziano's poem is Lucretius I.32–34.
Provenance
Although today Botticelli is the most celebrated Florentine painter of second half of the 15th century, his reputation only reached this level in the late 19th century when his emphasis on line and contour chimed with the contemporary sensibility. Between 1857 and 1878, the National Gallery, London, acquired five of his works, including Venus and Mars.[13]
This painting was bought in Florence by the English collector and dealer Alexander Barker between 1864 and 1869, and then bought by the National Gallery at the auction of Barker's collection at Christie's on 6–8 June 1874, for £1,050 (Lot 88).[42] This is the only recorded sale on the open market of one of Botticelli's large mythological paintings, the others having all reached the collection of the Medici Grand-Dukes of Florence by an early date, and then passed to the Uffizi. The National Gallery bought 13 works at the sale, where the Director, Sir William Boxall, was accompanied by Benjamin Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was keen to buy. The unfinished Nativity by Piero della Francesca was bought for £2,415, and a fresco Return of Ulysses by Pinturicchio for £2,152.[43]
The price reached in 1874 is one of the examples used by Gerald Reitlinger to demonstrate the difference in the mid-Victorian period between the very high prices realized by contemporary art, and the modest ones for Old Masters; a disparity just as marked in the early 21st century. In 1873, it appears that The Otter Hunt by Edwin Landseer, who died that year, was sold privately for £10,000.[44]
Piero di Cosimo
Though there are other paintings of Venus and Mars, Botticelli's work is often compared and contrasted with the Venus, Mars and Cupid by Piero di Cosimo (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, c. 1505), a younger Florentine painter who had probably seen the Botticelli. The painting probably dates to around 1500-05, and later belonged to Giorgio Vasari. The similarities include the two figures reclining, with Mars asleep and Venus awake, and a group of infant attendants who play with Mars' armour, in a setting of bushes opening to a landscape. They contrast in atmosphere and most other aspects, and Piero has included an infant Cupid, a wide landscape and some of the animals that he loved to paint.[45] For Erwin Panofsky, the Piero is an "enchantingly primitivistic pastoral" where Botticelli's version is a "solemnly classicizing allegory".[46]
↑ Dempsey; Lightbown, 169–170 covers the same ground, reaching a different conclusion. Bellingham, 368–369, is more supportive, though favouring a multiplicity of meanings. Dempsey's original suggestion was in his Inventing the Renaissance Putto, 119–121
↑ Ettlingers, 141–144; Lightbown, 168; Bellingham, 365–366. The passage in Lucian is given in translation by Bellingham, 364–365
Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, was an Italian statesman, the de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic, and the most powerful patron of Renaissance culture in Italy. Lorenzo held the balance of power within the Italic League, an alliance of states that stabilized political conditions on the Italian Peninsula for decades, and his life coincided with the mature phase of the Italian Renaissance and the golden age of Florence. As a patron, he is best known for his sponsorship of artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo. On the foreign policy front, Lorenzo manifested a clear plan to stem the territorial ambitions of Pope Sixtus IV, in the name of the balance of the Italian League of 1454. For these reasons, Lorenzo was the subject of the Pazzi conspiracy (1478), in which his brother Giuliano was assassinated. The Peace of Lodi of 1454 that he supported among the various Italian states collapsed with his death. He is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence.
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or simply Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century, when he was rediscovered by the Pre-Raphaelites who stimulated a reappraisal of his work. Since then, his paintings have been seen to represent the linear grace of late Italian Gothic and some Early Renaissance painting, even though they date from the latter half of the Italian Renaissance period.
The Birth of Venus is a painting by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli, probably executed in the mid 1480s. It depicts the goddess Venus arriving at the shore after her birth, when she had emerged from the sea fully-grown. The painting is in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
Piero di Cosimo, also known as Piero di Lorenzo, was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.
Giuliano de' Medici was the second son of Piero de' Medici and Lucrezia Tornabuoni. As co-ruler of Florence, with his brother Lorenzo the Magnificent, he complemented his brother's image as the "patron of the arts" with his own image as the handsome, sporting "golden boy". He was killed in a plot known as the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478.
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, nicknamed the Popolano, was an Italian banker and politician, the brother of Giovanni il Popolano. He belonged to the junior branch of the House of Medici of Florence.
AgnoloAmbrogini, commonly known as Angelo Poliziano or simply Poliziano, anglicized as Politian, was an Italian classical scholar and poet of the Florentine Renaissance. His scholarship was instrumental in the divergence of Renaissance Latin from medieval norms and for developments in philology. His nickname Poliziano, by which he is chiefly identified to the present day, was derived from the Latin name of his birthplace, Montepulciano.
Pallas and the Centaur is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It has been proposed as a companion piece to his Primavera, though it is a different shape. The medium used is tempera paints on canvas and its size is 207 x 148 cm. The painting has been retouched in many places, and these retouchings have faded.
Simonetta Vespucci, nicknamed la bella Simonetta, was an Italian noblewoman from Genoa, the wife of Marco Vespucci of Florence and the cousin-in-law of Amerigo Vespucci. She was known as the greatest beauty of her age in Italy, and was allegedly the model for many paintings by Sandro Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo, and other Florentine painters. Some art historians have taken issue with these attributions, which the Victorian critic John Ruskin has been blamed for promulgating.
The decade of the 1480s in art involved some significant events.
Saint Augustine in His Study is a fresco painting of Augustine of Hippo executed in 1480 by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. It is in the church of Ognissanti in Florence.
The Madonna of the Magnificat, is a painting of circular or tondo form by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. It is also referred to as the Virgin and Child with Five Angels. In the tondo, we see the Virgin Mary writing the Magnificat with her right hand, with a pomegranate in her left, as two angels crown her with the Christ child on her lap. It is now in the galleries of the Uffizi, in Florence.
The Adoration of the Magi is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. Botticelli painted this piece for the altar in Gaspare di Zanobi del Lama's chapel in Santa Maria Novella around 1475. This painting depicts the Biblical story of the Three Magi following a star to find the newborn Jesus. The image of the altarpiece centers on the Virgin Mary and the newborn Jesus, with Saint Joseph behind them. Before them are the three kings who are described in the New Testament story of the Adoration of the Magi. The three kings worship the Christ Child and present him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. In addition, the Holy Family is surrounded by a group of people who came to see the child who was said to be the son of God.
Portrait of a Young Woman is a painting which is commonly believed to be by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, executed between 1480 and 1485. Others attribute authorship to Jacopo da Sellaio. The woman is shown in profile but with her bust turned in three-quarter view to reveal a cameo medallion she is wearing around her neck. The medallion in the painting is a copy in reverse of "Nero's Seal", a famous antique carnelian representing Apollo and Marsyas, which belonged to Lorenzo de' Medici.
Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder, also known as Portrait of a Youth with a Medal, is a tempera painting by Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. The painting features a young man displaying in triangled hands a medal stamped with the likeness of Cosimo de' Medici. The identity of the young man has been a long-enduring mystery. Completed in approximately 1475, it is on display in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence.
The Calumny of Apelles is a panel painting in tempera by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. Based on the description of a lost ancient painting by Apelles, the work was completed in about 1494–95, and is now in the Uffizi, Florence.
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".
Medici is a historical drama television series created by Frank Spotnitz and Nicholas Meyer. The series was produced by Italian companies Lux Vide and Rai Fiction, in collaboration with Spotnitz's Big Light Productions. The series follows the House of Medici, bankers of the Pope, in 15th-century Florence. Each season follows the events of a particular moment of the family's history exploring the political and artistic landscape of Renaissance Italy.
The Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli is a manuscript of the Divine Comedy by Dante, illustrated by 92 full-page pictures by Sandro Botticelli that are considered masterpieces and amongst the best works of the Renaissance painter. The images are mostly not taken beyond silverpoint drawings, many worked over in ink, but four pages are fully coloured. The manuscript eventually disappeared and most of it was rediscovered in the late nineteenth century, having been detected in the collection of the Duke of Hamilton by Gustav Friedrich Waagen, with a few other pages being found in the Vatican Library. Botticelli had earlier produced drawings, now lost, to be turned into engravings for a printed edition, although only the first nineteen of the hundred cantos were illustrated.
Scenes from the Life of Saint Zenobius is a series of paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. Four panels from the series survive, which are now in three different museums. Each depicts three or more incidents from the life of Zenobius, an early Bishop of Florence who perhaps died in 417. The works are all in tempera on wood, and around 66 cm (26 in) high, though their length varies rather more, from about 149 to 182 cm.
Avery-Quash, Susanna, in Gordon, Dillian, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume 1, 2003, ISBN1857092937
Bellingham, David, "Aphrodite Deconstructed: Botticelli's Venus and Mars in the National Gallery, London", in Brill's Companion to Aphrodite, eds. Amy C. Smith, Sadie Pickup, 2010, BRILL, ISBN9047444507, 9789047444503, google books
Davies, Martin, Catalogue of the Earlier Italian Schools, National Gallery Catalogues, 1961, reprinted 1986, ISBN0901791296
Hartt, Frederick, History of Italian Renaissance Art, (2nd ed.) 1987, Thames & Hudson (U.S. Harry N. Abrams), ISBN0500235104
Langmuir, Erica, The National Gallery Companion Guide, 1997 revised edition, National Gallery, London, ISBN185709218X (Yale University Press, 2016 ed., ISBN978-1857095968)
Lightbown, Ronald, Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work, Thames & Hudson, 1989
Potterton, Homan. The National Gallery. London: Thames & Hudson, 1977
Reitlinger, Gerald; The Economics of Taste, Vol I: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices 1760–1960, Barrie and Rockliffe, London, 1961
Wind, Edgar, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, 1967 ed., Peregrine Books
Literary sources
Ficino, Marsilio, Commentary on the Symposium: De Amore, from Oration V, chapter 8
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