Mars abandoning Venus.

Mars Abandoning Venus, painted around 1820 and now in the Museum of John Paul II Collection in Warsaw, depicts the mythological moment when the god of war tears himself away from the goddess of love — a subject carrying obvious allegorical content about the incompatibility of violence and beauty, duty and pleasure. By 1820 Etty had completed his first significant Italian journey (he would make a longer visit in 1822-24) and was beginning to apply his deepened understanding of Venetian colorism to mythological subjects. The Museum of John Paul II Collection in Warsaw, established from donations to the Catholic Church in Poland, holds European paintings spanning multiple centuries within its collections; the presence of an Etty mythological subject reflects both the breadth of European painting represented in Polish collections and the complex history of art movement between Britain and Central Europe.

The contrasting flesh tones of the male and female figures reveal Etty's nuanced understanding of skin coloring, with Mars rendered in bronzed warmth and Venus in cooler, pearlescent tones.