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".
