Venus Cupid Bacchus and Ceres

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Venus Cupid Bacchus and Ceres: Peter Paul Rubens

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Peter Paul Rubens Oil Painting - Venus Cupid Bacchus and Ceres

Keywords: Venus, Cupid, Bacchus, Ceres

Work Overview: Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres
Peter Paul Rubens
Date: 1612 - 1613
Style: Baroque
Genre: mythological painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 200 x 141 cm
Staatliche Museen, Kassel

Venus and her son Cupid are being offered food and wine by Ceres, goddess of the fruits of the field, and Bacchus, god of wine. The subject comes from a line by the Roman comic poet Terence (d. 159 BC) which frequently figures in the emblem literature that developed from the mid-16th century: 'Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus' - without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would freeze. Love is impossible without food and drink. Rather than depicting a boisterous feast, Rubens has opted for a rather restrained scene that must be read as a plea for moderation in pleasure.

Rubens produced this painting a few years after his eight-year stay in Italy, where he was employed at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, and also in Rome. The knowledge of antiquity he gained then was put to use in this painting, as also in a later work on the same theme in 1614, (Royal Fine Arts Museum, Antwerp), Ceres' pose being taken from the Crouching Venus of the Hellenistic sculptor Doidalsas, dating from around 240-230 BC. Rubens certainly knew the marble copy in the Farnese collection in Rome (today in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples).

What he particularly appreciated in Hellenistic and Roman sculpture was its formal dynamism, although he saw in ancient sculpture generally a realm of flawless, ideal nature. In painting from such antique models, he says in his De Imitatione Statuarum, a treatise 'on the imitation of sculpture', the statuary has to be humanised, translated into flesh and blood.

Rubens started this painting of Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres in 1612 and finished it in 1613. It measures 200×141 cm and now hangs in Kassel in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen.

Rubens executed this painting after his stay with the Gonzaga at Mantua, where he saw the Crouching Venus that later came into the possession of Sir Peter Lely and is now known under his name.

The whole allegory should probably be understood in context, and contrast, with the Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus motif: Venus and Cupid (love), Bacchus (wine) and Ceres (food) all contributing to a good life.

Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus, Latin for Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus freezes,[2] or Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus,[3] is a quotation from the Roman comedian Terence (c. 195/185 – c. 159 BC) that became a proverb in the Early Modern period. Its simplest level of meaning is that love needs food and wine to thrive. It was sometimes shown in art, especially in the period 1550–1630, in Northern Mannerism in Prague and the Low Countries, as well as by Rubens.
It has been suggested that the concentration of images by the Haarlem Mannerists reflects the patronage of the powerful brewers of Haarlem.
Depictions in art divide into those showing Venus, typically with an accompanying Cupid, either "freezing", without food and drink (or much in the way of clothing), or more comfortable when supplied with them, usually by the other gods in person.[15] The latter type is more common, but Bartholomeus Spranger and Rubens are among the artists who used both types.[16] Like the Feast of the Gods, another subject popular among the Northern Mannerists, the subject offers the combination of a relatively obscure classical reference and the opportunity for plentiful nudity. The subject appears in paintings, drawings and prints, and compositions are often copied between these media, and between artists.
Rubens employed the motif repeatedly in different ways, including the visibly freezing Venus frigida, a version with Amor who desperately attempts to start a fire, and one with Venus at the Moment maßvollen Erwärmens und ruhigen Erwachens (Moment of modestly warming and quietly waking) in which she hesitantly accepts a wine cup from Bacchus.[31] Italian artists rarely depicted it, whether because it came from the mainly northern tradition of emblem books or because the subject had less resonance in a warmer climate.[32] Exceptions are a painting by Pietro Liberi and a print by Agostino Carracci after one by Goltzius.[33] After the baroque period the motif no longer appears often.

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