Zöllner, Frank: Botticelli: Images of Love and Spring (1998)

reclining on it, playing, I suppose; and then another has
got into the breast plate, which lies hollow part up-
wards.”‘5

Although this passage from classical literature does
not correspond exactly to Botticelli’s work (because the

subjects are Alexander and Roxana rather than Mars
and Venus), the description of the little gods of love —
the satyrs — has too many similarities with Botticelli’s
painting to be ignored: in Botticelli’s picture they have a
lance (equivalent to the “spear”); one of the satyrs has
slipped into the armor — just as Lucian describes it;
they are playing with the instruments of war. We can
thus assume that two different types of sources had a
direct influence on Botticelli’s painting: a classical
description of an image (the ekphrasis') and a contem-
porary account of an identical scene of Mars and Venus
together.

In addition, there may have been a third source of
inspiration for Botticelli’s Mars and Venus. It is generally
accepted that the formal model for Botticelli’s com-
position was based on a relief sculpture showing the
story of Bacchus and Ariadne on a classical sarcophagus
in Rome, where it has remamed to this day. Here
too we find a semi-recumbent female figure opposite a

Detail of sarcophagus
with Bacchus and Ariadne

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