Venus lies awake as Mars sleeps, oblivious to the satyrs playing with his armour. Botticelli’s celebrated painting appears to depict a familiar mythological love affair. But what if it was designed to tell several stories at once?

Join the Edgar Wind Society for an illustrated lecture by Dr David Bellingham, art historian, classicist and Programme Director of the MA in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Drawing on his published research, Bellingham will explore how Botticelli’s Venus and Mars moves between classical mythology, the marriage of Alexander and Roxana, the courtly romance of Medici Florence, and Christian ideas of temptation and redemption.

Rather than competing interpretations, these different meanings may have been intended to coexist. How does our understanding of the painting change when we imagine it not on a gallery wall, but in the Florentine marriage chamber for which it may originally have been made? How might a single image of erotic desire become a meditation on marriage, morality and spiritual love?

Supported by Sotheby’s Institute of Art.

Description supplied by the event organiser.