Venus and Mars is a c. 1483 painting by the Italian Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 master Sandro Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

. It shows the Roman gods Venus

Venus (mythology)

Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

 and Mars

Mars (mythology)

Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...

 in an allegory of Beauty and Valour. Venus watches Mars sleep, while two infant satyrs play carrying his armour while another rests under his arm. A fourth blows a conch shell in his ear in an effort to wake him.

The scene is set in a forest, and the background shows, in the distance, the sea from which Venus emerged. A swarm of wasps hover around Mars' head, possibly as a symbol that love is often accompanied by pain.

Source

One possible source for the image is the Stanze of Poliziano

Poliziano

Angelo Ambrogini, commonly known by his nickname, anglicized as Politian, Italian Poliziano, Latin Politianus was an Italian Renaissance classical scholar and poet, one of the revivers of Humanist Latin...

. 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". Poliziano was in one of the humanist

Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...

 scholars in the court of Lorenzo de' Medici

Lorenzo de' Medici

Lorenzo de' Medici was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent by contemporary Florentines, he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists and poets...

, and in his stanze he alludes to Giuliano di Piero de' Medici

Giuliano di Piero de' Medici

Giuliano de' Medici was the second son of Piero de' Medici and Lucrezia Tornabuoni. As co-ruler of Florence, with his brother Lorenzo the Magnificent, he complemented his brother's image as the "patron of the arts" with his own image as the handsome, sporting, "golden boy."-Death:As the opening...

's prowess in a jousting tournament his older brother Lorenzo had organized to celebrate a treaty with Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

.

Giuliano di Piero de' Medici is most likely the athletic model for the war god who slumbers next to the goddess in this work. However, the description, with Mars in Venus' lap, gazing up at her, is a poor fit to the painting. Venus may have been Simonetta Vespucci

Simonetta Vespucci

Simonetta Cattaneo de Candia Vespucci, nicknamed la bella Simonetta was an Italian Renaissance noblewoman from Genoa, the wife of Marco Vespucci of Florence. She also is alleged to have been the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent's younger brother...

, a great beauty of the time, married to the cousin of Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer. The Americas are generally believed to have derived their name from the feminized Latin version of his first name.-Expeditions:...

. Botticelli, who portrayed her many times after her death, asked to be buried, as she had been, in the Church of Ognissanti

Church of Ognissanti, Florence

The Chiesa di Ognissanti is a Franciscan church in Florence, Italy. Founded by the lay order of the Umiliati, the church was dedicated to all the saints and martyrs, known and unknown....

 in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

.

Provenance

Although today Botticelli is the most celebrated Florentine painter of second half of the 15th century, he was only rediscovered in the late 19th century when his emphasis on line and contour chimed with the contemporary sensibility. Between 1857 and 1878, the National Gallery

National gallery

The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...

, London, acquired five of his works, including Venus and Mars.