Palma Giovane, 'Mars and Venus', about 1590

Mars and Venus

Palma Giovane

Not on display

About the work

Overview

Venus, goddess of love and beauty, twists to embrace her lover, Mars, god of war, who has thrown off his armour in his haste to reach her bed. Mars is only half on the bed with Venus above him as he meets her lips in the urgency of their desire.

A pair of doves, an attribute of Venus, are beside winged Cupid, who struggles to untie the laces of Mars‘ footwear. Venus is married to Vulcan. The voluminous red bed drapes are looped around the bedposts to reveal this scene of adultery like a stage set. The earthiness of the deities’ forbidden passion is echoed and expressed in the painting’s sultry colour palette. The haste of the brushwork suggests that this picture was never intended to be displayed where it would be closely inspected.

When Mars and Venus was presented to the National Gallery in 1838 it was considered unsuitable for public exhibition, and so it hung for many years in the Director’s office.

In-depth

Venus, goddess of love and beauty, twists to embrace her lover, Mars, god of war, who has thrown off his armour in his haste to reach her bed. Venus is above and on top of Mars, taking his head in her arm. Mars tumbles onto the bed as he meets her lips in the urgency of their desire.

A pair of doves, an attribute of Venus, are beside winged Cupid, who struggles to untie the laces of Mars‘ footwear. Venus is married to Vulcan. The voluminous red bed drapes are looped back around the bedposts to reveal this scene of adultery like a stage set. The earthiness of the deities’ forbidden passion is echoed and expressed in the painting’s sultry colour palette. The haste of the brushwork, without much detail, suggests that this painting was never intended to be displayed where it would be closely inspected – perhaps high up, or in a bedroom over a door.

The erotic directness of the picture as well as its bawdy comedy are captured in a description of the painting from 1652 as ‘A Venus whole body on a bed & Mars a fat red colord knave wch she pulls down & a cupid pulls off his buskins’. Palma’s picture retains none of the elegance or poetic beauty of Titian’s Venus and Adonis (Prado, Madrid) from which Venus' pose derives, but has its own direct, voluptuous appeal.

This painting is close in size, character, and connected in subject to Palma Giovane’s Venus and Cupid at the Forge of Vulcan of about 1590 (Staatliche Museen, Kassel), which shows Venus from the front kissing Cupid, while Vulcan works in his forge in the background. There is a larger painting of Venus and Mars by Palma dated MDC (1600) in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In 1619, the Italian poet Marino asked Palma to paint a picture of Mars leaving his armour in the care of a nymph as he turns to Venus, who waits for him, naked on her bed. He had given a large canvas of this subject to one of the Doria family and now wanted a smaller version on copper. The National Gallery’s painting may be a little too early in date to have been the one given away by Marino, although the description seems to match.

What may be a preparatory study for the National Gallery’s painting or for another painting of Mars and Venus is in the British Museum’s album of Palma Giovane’s drawings. It is mounted on the same page as the preparatory drawing for the painting in Kassel, suggesting that Palma may have come up with the idea for both of them at the same time.

When Mars and Venus was presented to the National Gallery in 1838 its owner, Hugh Percy, the 3rd Duke of Northumberland, stated that it was not suitable for public exhibition, and so it hung for many years in the Director’s office.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Mars and Venus
Artist: Palma Giovane
Artist dates: 1554 - 1628
Date made: about 1590
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 132.7 × 168.4 cm
Acquisition credit: Presented by the Duke of Northumberland, 1838
Inventory number: NG1866
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Previous owners: Hugh Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland

Provenance

Recorded in the collection of Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland (1602–1668), in the gallery of his house in London in 1652. The Earl had moved his paintings into Suffolk House from York House (next door) in 1647. The picture may perhaps have been among those from the Duke of Buckingham’s collection which had hung in York House and which the Earl acquired in an arrangement made with Parliament (which had confiscated the Duke’s property), but the Earl acquired paintings from other sources too. Inherited by the 11th Earl (Josceline Percy, 1644–1670), it is recorded again, after his death, in an inventory of the pictures at Petworth House in Sussex, the family’s principal country seat, on 30 July 1671, valued at £15. It was then the property of the 11th Earl’s daughter and her husband, the 6th Duke of Somerset (1662–1748), and, briefly, of the 7th Duke of Somerset, who died in 1750. It is likely to have been returned to Suffolk House, by then known as Northumberland House, before 1750 when, the paintings at Petworth, together with Petworth itself, became the property of the 7th Duke’s nephew, the 2nd Earl of Egremont. The paintings in Northumberland House were inherited by the 7th Duke’s daughter, who became the first Duchess of Northumberland. Her grandson, the 3rd Duke, presented the painting to the National Gallery.

Further information has come to light regarding the painting’s location between 1794 and its ownership by James Hay. The picture remained where it was recorded in 1794, in a Retrete in the Cuarto del Rey in the Palacio Nuevo at Madrid, and was listed in two inventories taken during the reign of Joseph Bonaparte: in 1808, ‘[Otro «cabinet», aunque no lo especifica] J. de Holbein, peintre célèbre de Henry VIII: Un chevalier & une dame enceinte; à bien soigner, magnifiques, curieux’; and in 1811, ‘OTRO GAVINETE DEL QUARTO DE DORMIR, 575 [871], Un hombre y una mujer embarazada agarrados por la mano HOLBEIN’.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Nicholas Penny, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings’, vol. 2, ‘Venice 1540–1600’, London 2008 and supplemented by Lorne Campbell; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2017

The Venus Paradox

A. G. Leventis Gallery

27 September 2017 - 15 January 2018

Bibliography

1901

A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, 11 vols, Milan 1901
1912

C.H.C. Baker, 'A Palma Giovine in the National Gallery?', The Burlington Magazine, XXI/112, 1912, pp. 234-5
1914

C. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell'arte, 1648, ed. D. von Hadeln, Berlin 1914
1957

S. Stone, A Note of the Pictures at Northumberland House Taken and Appraised by Mr Symon Stone the 30th of June 1671, n.p. 1957
1959

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Venetian School, London 1959
1975

C. Gould, Delaroche and Gautier: Gautier's Views on the 'Execution of Lady Jane Grey' and on other Compositions by Delaroche, London 1975
1975

P. Zampetti (ed.), I pittori bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo: Le origini, 13 vols, Bergamo 1975
1979

H. Potterton, Venetian Seventeenth-Century Painting: A Loan Exhibition from Collections in Britain and Ireland (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 5 September - 30 November 1979), London 1979
1984

S. Mason Rinaldi, Palma il Giovane: L'opera completa, Milan 1984
1987

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1987
1990

S.M. Rinaldi, Palma il Giovane, 1548-1628: Disegni e dipinti (exh. cat. Museo Correr, 19 January - 29 April 1990), Milan 1990
1994

J. Wood, 'Van Dyck and the Earl of Northumberland: Taste and Collecting in Stuart England I', in S.J. Barnes and A.K. Wheelock (eds), Van Dyck 350, Washington 1994, pp. 280-324
1996

J. Anderson, 'The Carracci Cartoons at the National Gallery', Apollo, 1996, pp. 52-3
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2008

Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, 2, Venice, 1540-1600, London 2008

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.