Mars, Venus and Eros

Engraving, 1508, signed with monogram "MAF" on plate at bottom centre and with date "1508. 16 D" at bottom right below halberd.

Mars, nude and sitting on a rock, beside which lays an uninscribed shield and armour, is grasping Venus, also nude, by the right shoulder; Cupid is at her side pushing her towards him

A very fine impression of the second version with added landscape in the background. Modifications include the addition of a Medusa design on Mars' shield, a quiver of arrows at right, a flaming torch held by Venus, a monogram of sorts on Mars' armour as well as the addition of several branches to the tree at left.

Previously believed to be a subject of Mantegna, later Petrucci supposes that the composition has been realised by Marcantonio himself, inspirited by Francesco Francia, Michelangelo and Verrocchio.

A fine impression, printed with tone on contemporary laid paper, trimmed to the platemark, very good condition.

The Mars, Venus and Cupid was traditionally thought to be based upon a drawing by Andrea Mantegna. Jebens mentioned a tentative visual connection between the engraving and Mantegna’s “Parnassus”, the oly work by Mantegna that bears any resemblance to the figures in the print. Kristeller followed by other scholars, more reasonably saw the Mars, Venus, and Cupid as a composition based upon several sources. The most popular view has been that the figure of Mars was based upon a lost drawing by Michelangelo, either a study for the marble David or for the Battle of Cascina.

Most recently however, Sheard has proposed that the Mars was based upon a drawing that Marcantonio himself made directly after the Belvedere Torso. If her theory is correct, the date of 16 December 1508 on the engraving would indicate an earlier date than has been previously thought for Marcantonio's arrival in Rome. For more than one reason it seems likely that Marcantonio based the Mars upon a drawing after the Belvedere Torso by Michelangelo.

The figure of Venus is even more difficult to associate with a specific model. In general, her full, rounded form- specifically her sloping shoulders, brightly-lit chest, flattened breasts, and curving arms come closest to the figures in “The Dream of Raphael”, after Giorgione. A Venetian prototype for the figure thus seems most reasonable. Although the figure of Venus recalls Marcantonio's Venetian experience, his use of a Michelangelo drawing for the figure of Mars indicates that he executed the engraving either in Florence or just after his arrival in Rome. His engraving technique suggests that he made the Mars, Venus, and Cupid before The Climber, based on the Battle of Cascina. In the latter work, the contours of the figures are heavily emphasized and the modeling lines form abstract, non-functional patterns over the surface of the figure; in the “Mars, Venus, and Cupid”, the fineness of the modeling lines and the more convincing relationship between the contours and the inner modeling foreshadow Marcantonio's figures in The Climbers of 1510. Increasingly, Marcantonio's figures become more convincingly articulated through his use of curving parallel strokes and varied areas of crosshatching which denote surface variations and areas of deep shadow.

Delaborde records three states of the Mars, Venus, and Cupid yet the variations between the second and third states he describes are so that there may have been only two.

Certainly, the additions to the first state of the engraving are many, and include the following: the ornament and head of Medusa on Mars's shield; the flaming torch held by Venus and Cupid; the quiver in the right corner; the branches that spring from the stump to the left of Mars; the hill with towers behind Mars's head; the foliage in the upper part of the central group of trees; additional modeling and stippling on the figures; and the small inscription on the armor of Mars.

The inscription has never been satisfactorily explained. Mariette and Passavant believed that it was a mark added by a goldsmith who provided the design of the ornaments added to the last state of the engraving. Alternatively, it could signify that Marcantonio himself acknowledged that a goldsmith provided the designs for existed the ornamentation by adding the inscription to the final state.