Venus, Mars and Cupid
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| Venus, Mars and Cupid |
|---|
| Piero di Cosimo , around 1505 |
| Oil on poplar wood |
| 72 × 182 cm |
| Gemäldegalerie, Berlin |
Venus, Mars and Amor is a painting by Piero di Cosimo , created in Florence around 1505. Shown are Venus , the goddess of love, Cupid , who ignites love in gods and people, and opposite them the sleeping god of war Mars . It is an oil painting on poplar wood in landscape format. It has been in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin since 1828 .
History and provenance
The client of the picture is not known. Piero's panel was probably a Spalliera picture, a type of picture popular in Florence at the time. Trellises served as a decorative finish to wooden wall cladding, especially in the living and sleeping areas of villas, and they were often ordered on the occasion of a family member's wedding. The mostly profane pictorial themes were taken by clients and artists from ancient mythology and literature. Even Botticelli's Calumny , the Primavera , the Birth of Venus and the model for Piero's image, Venus and Mars , written around 1483, apply in research Spallierabilder.
After 1550, the picture was in the possession of Giorgio Vasari , who describes it in the second version of his Vite . In the preface to the Florentine Vasari edition from 1832 to 1838, the Casa Nerli in Borgo San Niccolo in Florence is mentioned as the location of the picture. Rumohr , who worked as a consultant in the development of the Berlin painting collection, acquired the picture there as early as 1828 for the Gemäldegalerie.
description
Venus and her companion Amor are depicted in an idyllic landscape, while Mars lies in a deep sleep opposite. Both are - except for the rosy loincloth of the god of war and light silk and veils around the shoulders and hips of Venus - undressed. A host of erots have seized the weapons and armor of the god of war, kidnap them and play with them. Cupid is snuggled into the crook of Venus, a white rabbit sniffs his right hand while the other points to sleeping Mars. The couple rests on a flower meadow in the shade of blooming myrtle bushes. At the feet of Venus a pair of pigeons beak, which, like the rabbit and the myrtle, has been one of the traditional attributes of Venus since ancient times . A pastel blue cloudless sky, gentle meadow hills on the side of Venus, a volcanic cone on the distant horizon, a quiet river that is lost in the horizon and a steep, phallically shaped rock reef, in front of which the erotes cavort, on the side of Mars, complete the picture at the top.
Interpretations
Like many pictures of the time that were taken around the Italian courts, the picture eludes a simple interpretation.
The interpretation of the picture as an allegory of the victory of love over war is obvious . The literary motif of the taming of the god of war by the goddess of love goes back, as Panofsky has shown, to the Roman poet Lucretius , who at the beginning of his didactic poem On the Nature of Things invokes Venus:
“ Meanwhile the wild roar of the roaring war is hot / All places are now silent and rest on land and water, / Since only you know how to make the world happy with the blessing of peace . Your husband directs the raging raging of war / mighty arms. Conquered by eternal love / If the god of war often leans back in the wife's lap / "
In Greek mythology, Venus was married to the limping and ugliest of the Olympian gods, Hephaestus - in Roman Vulcanus . Homer told in his odyssey as Venus in a night of love with Mars by her husband in flagrante is surprised. The skilful Hephaestus throws an invisible but highly effective net over the adulterous couple, whereupon the gods in Olympus break out in the proverbial Homeric laughter . In Piero's picture, the couple obviously has no inkling of Hephaestus' act of revenge, only Cupid, who looks at the sky with wide eyes and points with his forefinger at the sleeping Mars, seems to notice the approaching disaster.
The London picture Venus and Mars by Botticelli, which is similar in composition , was created around 1483, also a Spalliera or Cassone picture , which Piero used as a model, completely missing this allusion to Homer's well-known story.
literature
- Hannelore Vorteilmann: Everyday life and celebrations. Florentine cassone and espallier painting from the time of Botticelli . National Museums in Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 2000. pp. 32–33. (Focus on pictures.) ISBN 3-88609-294-1
- Guy de Tervarent: Attributes and symbols dans l'art profane. Dictionnaire d'un langage perdu. (1450-1600) . 2nd edition fondue et corrigée. Droz, Genève 1997. (Titre courant. 7.) ISBN 2-600-00507-2
- Giorgio Vasari : The life of Piero di Cosimo, Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli . Introduced, commented on and edited by Christina Irlenbusch (Piero Di Cosimo) and Katja Lemelsen (Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli). Newly translated by Victoria Lorini (Piero Di Cosimo and Fra Bartolomeo) and Sabine Feser (Mariotto Albertinelli). Wagenbach, Berlin 2008. (Edition Giorgio Vasari.) ISBN 978-3-8031-5039-4
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erich Schleier: Venus, Mars and Amor. In: SMB Digital. Retrieved July 14, 2020 .
- ↑ Giovanni Masselli (ed.): Le opere di Giorgio Vasari. Pittore e architetto aretino. Volume 1. David Passigli e Socj, Florence 1832, p. 469.
- ↑ Tervarent: attribute et symboles dans l'art profane. 1997, pp. 133-134, 276, 332-333.
- ^ Erwin Panofsky : Studies in Iconology. Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (= The Mary Flexner Lectures. 7, ZDB -ID 12280422 ). Oxford University Press, New York NY 1939. Quoted from: Henning Bock (Red.): Catalog of the paintings from the 13th to 18th centuries. Gemäldegalerie Berlin. Berlin 1975. p. 318.
- ^ David Bellingham: Aphrodite Deconstructed: Botticelli's Venus and Mars in the National Gallery, London. In: Amy C. Smith , Sadie Pickup (Ed.): Brill's Companion to Aphrodite. Abridged version. Brill, Leiden u. a. 2010. pp. 347-374. ISBN 978-90-04-18003-1
