#venusdeity

Venus, the goddess of love, stands nude, grasping a piece of cloth around her hips. The dolphin at her feet supports the figure and alludes to the goddess’s birth from the sea. This depiction of Venus ultimately derived from an extremely popular Greek statue created by the sculptor Praxiteles about 350 B.C. Indeed Praxiteles’s statue was so popular that, beginning around 100 B.C., many artists created variations on his theme of the naked Venus.

This statue is a Roman reproduction of one of those Hellenistic variants. It was discovered in Rome around 1510, where it contributed to the Renaissance revival of the Classical tradition. Scholars once believed that this statue was owned by Cardinal Mazarin, advisor to Louis XIV, king of France. Although this is unlikely, the statue is still known to many as the Mazarin Venus.

In this tabletop bronze sculpture, Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war, tenderly embrace in a union of opposites. Although Hans Mont composed the statue with a dominant view of Venus from the front and Mars from the side, the complex entwining of the figures encourages the viewer to walk around them. Mont reveals the characters’ personalities through the shapes of their bodies. Venus curves her elegant long limbs in an unfinished spiral around the more rectilinear posture of the muscular god of war. As is characteristic of Mannerism, naturalism is sacrificed for elegance of composition: Venus’s forearms and wrists bend illogically as she wraps her long arms around Mars. While the figures’ bodies express their emotional intimacy, their faces remain surprisingly impassive. The sculptor’s choice of theme, the small-scale format, and the artist’s use of bronze show the interest of artists and patrons in reviving the culture and art of classical antiquity, beginning in the 1400s.