Mars and Venus, after 1580

About the Work

This painting, acquired as an original by Veronese, looks because of its remarkable size particularly splendid. The copyist exploited the warm light and the shimmering costly fabrics to make the skin of the loosely draped goddess Venus glow – in keeping with the Venetian master’s intention. The scant research into this work has identified it as a workshop replica, but the quality of the execution casts that into doubt. It may be an exact copy by another 16th-century artist outside Veronese’s workshop. This question will most likely never be fully resolved, as is so often the case with copies by anonymous artists.