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Behold the man
Penitent Magdalene
Venus and Mars
Saints Sebastian, John the Baptist and Francis
Susanna and the Elders
Entertainment in a garden of Albaro
Self-portrait of the painter in the act of painting the portrait of his father
Cain and Abel
Madonna of the candle
Madonna of the veil
Landscape with tree-lined avenue
Sorrowful Christ in the act of blessing
Still life of fruit, vegetables and flowers
Sant’Orsola
Christ and the adulteress
Adoration of the shepherds
Behold the man
Penitent Magdalene
Venus and Mars
Saints Sebastian, John the Baptist and Francis
Susanna and the Elders
Entertainment in a garden of Albaro
Self-portrait of the painter in the act of painting the portrait of his father
Cain and Abel
Madonna of the candle
Madonna of the veil
Landscape with tree-lined avenue
Sorrowful Christ in the act of blessing
Still life of fruit, vegetables and flowers
Sant’Orsola
Christ and the adulteress
Adoration of the shepherds

Venus and Mars

Peter Paul Rubens

Displayed in:

White Palace

White Palace

Via Garibaldi, 11, Genoa

Closed today: open tomorrow at 09:00

Verified profile

The painting is presented as an allegory: Love disarms Mars, god of war, who, astonished, surrenders to the busty charm of Venus and the intoxication caused by the wine contained in the silver flask and cup, offered to him by Bacchus, the god of the joy of living. Venus wears contemporary clothes and her face and her shapely physiognomy reflect the canons of beauty common in Rubensian production and do not belong, as the inventories of the Brignole - Sale house wanted, to the painter's second wife. Mars, on the other hand, wears the typical lansquenet attire and is not a self-portrait of the artist, as estimated by the aforementioned inventories, but reproduces the face, identical right down to the expression, of a member of the Van den Wijngaerd family, which Rubens portrayed at least other twice. The Fury that bursts, on the right, from the shadows of a landscape that, on the left, turns out to be desolate, burnt and upset by the war, was created with vibrant essential touches of brown and black directly on the reddish-brown preparation and contrasts with the sensuous chromatic intensity and the intact brightness of the impasto of the figures in the foreground, of Titian ancestry. Masterpiece of the Flemish artist's late maturity, datable between 1632 and 1635, the panel is mentioned for the first time in Genoa in about 1735, when it appeared to belong to Gio. Francesco II Brignole - Sale in the Palazzo Rosso; according to a recent survey, the painting nevertheless arrived in the city from Madrid about thirty years earlier, that is, after 1691. The events of the work in the following thirty years up to 1735 are still unknown.
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Details

Title: Venus and Mars

Author: Peter Paul Rubens

Date: 1632-1635

Technique:

Displayed in: White Palace

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