The Renaissance Painters: Artists

At very first glance it does not look as if there might be any relation in between the two paintings. The Wtewael is really a little (8" x 6 1/8") dramatic picture filled on the action of moving figures. The Botticelli painting is very calm and 2 very even now figures fill up most in the foreground whilst a few other smaller, much more active figures are just behind them. Each paintings refer on the legendary love affair between Mars the god of discord and war and Venus the goddess of adore and beauty. The affair was, as the Roman poet Ovid said, "the best-known story during the whole of heaven" (Ovid 99). But you can find different versions with the story throughout classical literature and Wtewael and Botticelli, owning a variety of purposes in mind, turned to several sources.

Wtewael's version derives from the story since it was told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (Fredericksen 17). 1 in the gods told Venus' husband Vulcan around the "shameful behaviour" of the a couple of and Vulcan, forged "slender bronze chains, nets and snares which the eye could not see" (Ovid 98). He hid the chains close to their bed and once they met again Vulcan trapped them and they "were held fast from the really act of embracing" (99). Vulcan threw open the doors and invited all the gods in to determine the "shameful sight" on the a couple of "close bound together" (99). The gods, Ovid says "were highly amused"

The differences in the 2 paintings' eroticism emerges as soon as it is asked what the thing with the erotic content occurs to be. In Wtewael's work it's clearly the central functionality on the picture to amuse the viewer. The truth how the jobs was made being shut away and contemplated by a select few signifies that Wtewael knew that the erotic element was of principal importance. As Fredericksen says, this jobs "exemplifies the Dutch fascination with human misbehavior, in particular scenes of lecherous misconduct" (17). Stylistically Wtewael was part of a Mannerist tradition that followed within the work of Bartholomaus Spranger (1546-1611) whose "elegantly attenuated figures" with their "over-agitation and eroticism" were adopted by many followers for instance Wtewael (Rosenberg et al., 14). The extremely eroticized treatment can even be noticed in his selection and execution of Old Testament subjects for instance his painting of Whole lot and His Daughters inside the Francis Howard Collection in England (Brion 257).

Plato. Symposium. Trans. Michael Joyce. Five Dialogues of Plato. Ed. Ernest Rhys. London: J. M. Dent, 1938. 17-81.

The erotic content of each paintings is very powerful but the attitudes in the painters' toward the eroticism vary considerably. In Botticelli's painting the simple subject can also be understood as being a post-sexual rest even if the general topic isn't known. A perceptive viewer will notice how Mars' relaxed right hand, resting in his lap, curls downward symbolizing his penis and this kind of detail, combined of the enclosed and individual atmosphere of the painting, tell the basic story. The exact same could possibly be said of Wtewael's painting exactly where it is clear that a guilty pair were found in bed by a crowd.

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