Sine Baccho et Cerere friget Venus

The Latin title is a proverb the 17th century knew well, taken from the Roman playwright Terence: without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus grows cold. Ceres stood for grain, Bacchus for wine, Venus for love, and the sense was practical. Desire needs feeding and warming or it fails. Rubens had come home to Antwerp after eight years studying in Italy, and he painted the idea straight. Venus shivers in the cold while the deities of harvest and wine attend her, her skin built from the warm living tones he had studied in Titian. He returned to this same saying more than once in these years, each time setting Venus pale at the centre against the ruddy warmth of the gods around her.