Mars, Minerva, Venus, and Cupid (early 1500s): Art, History and Details

Mars, Minerva, Venus, and Cupid (early 1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Valerio Belli (Italian, c. 1468–1546).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Mars, the god of war, chooses Minerva over Venus, goddesses representing Virtue and Vice. The subject was common in antiquity, although the male figure traditionally represents Hercules. The snake passing from Minerva to Mars lionizes wisdom, perhaps indicating that the patron, who has yet to be identified, connected the idea of a difficult choice to a specific military or political problem.

Object facts

• Title: Mars, Minerva, Venus, and Cupid
• Date: early 1500s
• Creator attribution: Valerio Belli (Italian, c. 1468–1546)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: rock crystal intaglio, gilded from reverse with gold and silver, backed with lapis lazuli, mounted in a gold pendant
• Dimensions: Overall: 6 cm (2 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2008.147

A detail from the museum

Lapis lazuli, the stone used in this pendant, was first mined in Afghanistan 9000 years ago.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Seydl, Jon L. "High Renaissance Sculpture." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 50, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 10-12.
• Seydl, Jon L. "Return to the Renaissance." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 52, no. 6 (November/December 2012): 13.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.