ars-videndi:Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c.1483, tempera on panel,69 x 173.5 cmNational Galler
ars-videndi:Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars, c.1483, tempera on panel,69 x 173.5 cmNational Gallery, London Botticelli painted only a small number of mythological subjects, but these are now probably his best known works. His Mars and Venus in the National Gallery, London, is of a size and shape to suggest that it was a spalliera, a painting made to be fitted into either furniture, or more likely in this case, wood panelling. The wasps buzzing around Mars’ head suggest that it may have been painted for a member of his neighbours the Vespucci family, whose name means “little wasps” in Italian, and who featured wasps in their coat of arms. Mars lies asleep, presumably after lovemaking, while Venus watches as infant satyrs play with his military gear, and one tries to rouse him by blowing a conch shell in his ear. The painting was no doubt given to celebrate a marriage, and decorate the bedchamber.(Wikipedia)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, 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. For Erwin Panofsky, the Piero is an “enchantingly primitivistic pastoral” where Botticelli’s version is a “solemnly classicizing allegory”.(Wikipedia) -- source link