Venus and Mars (Botticelli)

Venus and Mars (or Mars and Venus) is a panel painting of about 1485 by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli.^[2] It shows the Roman gods Venus, goddess of love, and Mars, god of war, in an allegory of beauty and valour. The youthful and voluptuous couple recline in a forest setting, surrounded by playful baby satyrs.

The painting was probably intended to commemorate a wedding, set into panelling or a piece of furniture to adorn the bedroom of the bride and groom,^[3] possibly as part of a set of works. This is suggested by the wide format and the close view of the figures. It is widely seen as representation of an ideal view of sensuous love. It seems likely that Botticelli worked out the concept for the painting, with its learned allusions, with an advisor such as Poliziano, the Medici house poet and Renaissance Humanist scholar.^[4]

The exact date of Venus and Mars is not known, but the National Gallery's dated the painting to "c. 1485" in 2017.^[5] Scholar Ronald Lightbown dates it to "probably around 1483", while art historians Leopold and Helen Ettlinger date the painting to "the latter half of the 1480s".^[6] All dates depend on analysis of the style, as the painting has not been convincingly tied to a specific date or event, such as a wedding.^[7] It likely comes a few years after the Primavera and Pallas and the Centaur (both about 1482) and around the time of The Birth of Venus (c. 1486).^[8] It is the only one of these paintings not in the Uffizi in Florence; it has been in the National Gallery in London since 1874.

Between 10 May and 10 September 2024, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery, the painting will be shown at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.^[9]