Female Supremacy Articles - Page 25

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Painted about 1485, Botticelli's romantic masterpiece, which now hangs at the National Gallery in London, uncannily prefigures modern psychobabble concerning the differences between the sexes. John Gray, in his best-selling "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus," codified as symbols of the idiosyncratic behavior of male and female humans the two planets that bear the deities' names. Today, countless books and articles echo the painting's themes, as well as its rich nuances. It is a Dear Abby column on canvas, enlightening us about the tensions inherent in the union of opposites, as current now as it was half a millennium earlier when Botticelli created it.Little is known about Botticelli's love life. What experiences or impulses drove him to depict this scene on canvas?

Did he, like Mars, ever shed his armor and shield and helplessly succumb to the overpowering enticements of love? Did the fate of the god of war ever befall him? The artist, who painted religious subjects, allegories and mythologies, was about 40 years old when he portrayed the Roman deities. The circumstances for which Botticelli painted "Venus and Mars" are not known, although it may have been as an adornment for the bedroom of a patron.But if Botticelli's fable of rapture and its aftermath was a commissioned work, who was the patron? A man who was psychologically secure enough to enjoy the reminder of women's power over men?