Venus and Mars (Botticelli)
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.
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.
[26] 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.
"[27] 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."
[28] 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.
[29] 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.
"[33] 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.
[36] 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.
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).
[39] 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.
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"),[41] giving a detailed account, including a description of Giuliano's banner with an image of Pallas Athene, which was painted by Botticelli.
[42] Many later commentators have probably taken this scripted display of Petrarchan courtly love using the beautiful young wife of a political ally over-literally, generating a legend of an actual affair between the two.
[43] 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".
[44] 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.
