AresAphrodite1.0101_RubensNatGal

National Gallery
Homer Od. 8.266-366

Peter Paul Rubens, "The Horrors of War" 1637-1638, National Gallery, London, NG279. — This is a reduced version of Rubens' "Horrors of War" which is in Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Sale di Marte, inv. no. 86.

Compare this bleak view of what happens when Ares and Aphrodite get together — the mural-crowned image of Europe says it all, but the trampled book beneath Ares' boot says something, too! — to the rosy view of Ares under Aphrodite's charming spell as Botticelli sees it (more like Homer).

Simon Schama, "Mr. Europe: Peter Paul Rubens and the universalist ideal," New Yorker April 28, 1997, pages 206 - 26: "Europe is in big trouble. ... Her painter, Peter Paul Rubens, describes her as 'robbed of all her jewels and ornaments ... the unfortunate Europe who, for so many years now, has suffered plunder, outrage, and misery."

Blatant allegory; Rubens' last treatment of war, executed for the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany. The representation of "Peace and War" of a decade earlier celebrated a diplomatic triumph no longer (able to be?) remembered here.

5 years earlier, Guercino had much less to say than this: AresAphrodite1.0110_Guercino

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.