Ares/Mars is portrayed as young and beardless and seated on a trophy of arms, while an Eros plays about his feet, drawing attention to the fact that the god of war, in a moment of repose, is presented as a love object.

Pietro Santi Bartoli recorded in his notes that it had been found near the Palazzo Santa Croce in Rione Campitelli during the digging of a drain.

(Haskell and Penny 1981:260) The sculpture found its way into the collection formed by Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi (1595–1632) the nephew of Pope Gregory XV at the splendid villa and gardens he built near Porta Pinciana, on the site where Julius Caesar and his heir, Octavian (Caesar Augustus), had had their villa.

[4] Less expensive representations could be found: Giambattista Piranesi's son Francesco made an engraving of it at the Villa Ludovisi in 1783 [1].

Casts of the Ludovisi Ares found their way into early museum collections, such as the Copenhagen Glyptotek [2] and were influential to several generations of Neoclassical and academic students.