Venus and Vulcan

Venus, the goddess of love, is shown nude and largely from behind beside Vulcan, the blacksmith-god, in a composition built out of the exaggerated musculature and twisting, artificial poses that define the Haarlem Mannerist manner. Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, with Hendrick Goltzius and Karel van Mander, formed the circle of painters and engravers whose Academy gave the Dutch city its distinctive late-sixteenth-century style, and this large canvas of 1590 is among its most ambitious mythological statements. The cool, pearly flesh tones and the studied contortions of the figures set the erotic subject inside a display of technical virtuosity, so that the picture is as much about the art of depicting the body as about the amours of the gods. The painting is held in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.