The shape of this work suggests that it was probably a
backboard for a bench or chest, decorated for a marriage.
Venus, goddess of Love and Beauty, watches while her lover
Mars, god of War, sleeps. Nothing is going to wake this guy
up - the baby satyrs are trying hard with a conch shell
blown straight into his ear, wasps buzz around his head
(diffiult to make them out I know, but they are in the right
hand corner). The wasps have been thought to give away the
identity of the patron for this painting. The Italian for
wasps is vespe, and Botticelli was known to have
worked for the Vespucci family - a clever pun). This is a
playful picture, it alludes to, as Erika Langmuir suggests
"the notion that making love exhausts a man while it
invigorates a
woman".
