Sandro Botticelli - Venus and Mars, about 1485, 69 × 173 cm. Mars, the god of war, has been conquered by Venus, the goddess of love. Here Mars is asleep and unarmed, while Venus is awake and alert. The meaning of the picture is that love conquers war, or love conquers all. Reclining on the ground, the handsome youth has fallen asleep. Naked and robbed of all his weapons, which are now in the hands of the fauns in the middle ground, he embodies a beautiful ideal from whose mind all thoughts of war are banished. Venus, on the other hand, richly dressed like a young woman from a distinguished family and thereby removed from the context of eroticism, remains alert and in the way symbolizes the permanence of peace. Equally balanced, Venus and Mars are virtually mirror images of each other. They establish the shape of an inverted triangle which is concluded at the top by the three fauns with the lance.