_Botticelli_ (Florentine: 1447-1510). _See 1034._
So the picture is usually called--Mars, the God of War, asleep, and
the young satyrs playing with his discarded armour, while one of
them attempts to rouse him by blowing a shell. The subject is almost
identical with that which Spenser draws in the _Faërie Queene_, where
Sir Guyon, the Knight of Purity, overthrows the Bower of Bliss in which
Acrasia (or Pleasure) dwells--the last and worst of Sir Guyon's trials,
for "it is harder to fight against pleasure than against pain." Note
especially the expression of the sleeping youth: he is overcome with
brutish paralysis, and they cannot awaken him. Note also the swarm of
hornets issuing from the tree-trunk by his head--significant of the
power that sensual indulgence has of venomously wounding. Visitors who
have been in Venice may remember similar details in Carpaccio's picture
of St. George and the Dragon (J. R. Anderson in _St. Mark's Rest_,
Second Supplement, p. 20).
Upon a bed of Roses she was layd,
As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin;
And was arrayd, or rather disarrayd,
All in a vele of silke and silver thin,
That hid no whit her alabaster skin ...
The young man, sleeping by her, seemd to be
Some goodly swayne of honorable place,
That certes it great pitty was to see
Him his nobility so fowle deface ...
His warlike armes, the ydle instruments
Of sleeping praise, were hong upon a tree ...
Ne for them ne for honour cared hee,
Ne ought that did to his advauncement tend;
But in lewd loves, and wastfull luxuree,
His dayes, his goods, his bodie, he did spend:
O horrible enchantment, that him so did blend!
_Faërie Queene_, bk. ii. 12, §§ lxxvii.-lxxx.
It has been suggested by Dr. Richter that the subject of the picture
is not mythological, but an illustration of Angelo Poliziano's poem,
"Stanze per la Giostra," "The Song of the Tournament," written in 1476
in glorification of Giuliano de' Medici, who had entered the lists in
the preceding year, at the tournament given in honour of Simonetta
Cattaneo. In this poem, Giuliano appears as a youth enamoured of the
chase, and contemptuous of women. Cupid determines that he shall fall
a prey to a pair of lovely eyes, and leads him to the presence of
Simonetta. But night falls and Simonetta vanishes, whereupon Venus
sends Giuliano a dream in which he is exhorted to enter the lists in
honour of his lady-love. He foreknows that victory will crown his
arms, and that love will reward his valour, but these joyful tidings
are black with the shadow of death, for early in 1476 Simonetta died.
According to Dr. Richter's interpretation, Giuliano in the picture
before us lies sunk in deepest sleep. The little satyrs are whispering
dreams into his ears, dreams from the realms of Venus. In his dreams,
Giuliano is overcome with fear, because his lady is clad in the armour
of Pallas: he cannot brook the gleam of her helmet and her lance. But
Cupid whispers: "Lift thine eyes, Giuliano, to that flame which with
its radiance blinds thee like a sun; for she it is who quickens noble
minds, and from the breast all evil thoughts expels." He dreams again;
a goddess comes to his aid leading him to battle and to victory. She
divests his lady of the armour of Pallas, and leaves her robed in white
(_Lectures on the National Gallery_, p. 51). The poem[196] may thus be
made to fit the picture. It may, however, be questioned whether the
action of the little Cupids is not more appropriate to the accepted
theory which sees in the armour the discarded weapons of a Mars or a
knight, and Count Plunkett (_Sandro Botticelli_, pp. 44-5) refers to
a passage in Lucian, with whose dialogues Botticelli was familiar.
In describing a picture by Aëtion of the "Nuptials of Alexander and
Roxana," Lucian describes how "on one side of it little Cupids play
among Alexander's armour; two are carrying his spear, as porters do a
heavy beam; two more grasp the handles of a shield, tugging it along
with another reclining on it ... and then another has got into the
breastplate.... All this is not idle fancy, on which the painter has
been lavishing needless pains; he is hinting that Alexander has also
another love, in War."