Children of the Divine

When I lived in London, I used to love to sit on a wooden bench in the National Gallery and admire a painting by the Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). The painting, however, was not the only focus of my interest, as I also used to enjoy studying the people that passed that masterpiece by. The painting in question is the Allegory of Venus and Time and it depicts Venus handing her infant son, Aeneas, to Father Time.

 Allegory of Venus and Time

As with all allegories, this one is open to interpretation. To me, it speaks poignantly of life, abandonment and exile, and it does so with the language of artistic excellence. Venus, one of the most beautiful and self-conscious I have ever seen, is perched on an ethereal cloud, dutifully adored by a putto and the Graces, who seem to be showering petals over her. Even though he is just a baby, Aeneas, whose father was the mortal Anchises, looks desolate and pensive, as he is handed to a scrawny looking Father Time. The Trojan prince is destined to live the troubled life of a mortal, although we do not know whether, as in some traditions, he will eventually be whisked up to Heaven and immortalised. Nevertheless, Venus seems haughty and dismissive, while Father Time appears more compassionate. His pleading look speaks of the dark and threatening world she would be abandoning her son to and begs the goddess to reconsider. Indeed, that is how Tiepolo depicts the earth, grim and partly eclipsed by the destructive scythe. There are other symbols, such as the two different doves, that could represent the "morganatic" union between Venus and Anchises, and the busy, but unattractive Cupid, whose face is turned towards the earth as he is carrying his heavy arrows, perhaps wondering what mischief he can cause there. One arrow may already have been destined for the tragic Dido... 

Tiepolo, I believe, was touching the Aeneas in all of us. As the poem Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold puts it:

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

As for the visitors at the gallery, hardly anyone ever paused to look at the painting, even though Aeneas had his gaze fixed towards us, as if to say: "This story is about you too." True, one can perhaps only absorb, or give credit to, a few paintings at a time, but we would probably discover so much more if we put the guide books aside now and then and trusted our instincts a little bit more.