The Feast of Venus

The Feast of Venus is Peter Paul Rubens's homage to Titian and his exuberant paintings of classical antiquity. Ruben's studied antuquity — and this work may have been a depiction of Ovid's "Fasti" — which describes the Roman feast of Venus Verticordia when women would sacrifices their accessories to Venus so the goddess would save them from uncontrollable desire.