Female Supremacy Articles - Page 25

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The painter delivers a vivid and emphatic warning: No matter how great the passion, moments of blissful union are fleeting. In Botticelli's vision of the power struggle between the sexes, woman is stronger than man on the playing field of love. She has stamina and strength; the exhausted man slumbers. But emotionally, the woman's needs are greater -- so the man, oblivious to the finer feelings, has more leverage. The leering satyrs suggest the artist's sympathy for the woman involved with a man whose only interest is carnal.

When will Venus become bored with the war god's surfeit of testosterone? For how long will the delights of sexual congress be enough to sustain the relationship? Venus certainly doesn't seem to care if the prankish satyrs succeed in disturbing her lover's slumber.