Mars and Venus United by Love
Paolo Veronese
1570s
Venus and Mars is an oil painting on canvas painted in the 1570s by the Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese.
The painting was commissioned by Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and was one of three mythological and love-themed works commissioned by the artist. The other two are at the Frick Collection in New York: The Allegory of Virtue and Performance and Allegory of the Source of Wisdom and Power. It deals with the romantic love of the Roman goddess of love Venus and the god of war Mars, as described in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0 · Text: Wikipedia (adapted), CC BY-SA 4.0