Venus, Mars and Amor in the forge of Vulcan

Venus, Mars, and Amor caught in the forge of Vulcan draws on one of antiquity's most frequently retold stories of divine adultery: Vulcan, the lame smith-god, catches his wife Venus in an affair with Mars, the god of war, by trapping them in an invisible net before the assembled Olympians. Van Heemskerck's 1536 canvas — painted the year of his return from Rome — deploys his newly acquired Italianate vocabulary on a subject that allowed both the display of idealized nudes and a comic domestic drama. The forge setting offered additional painterly interest through the contrast of firelit shadow and the presence of the smith's tools, a combination of still life and dramatic narrative. The canvas format, relatively unusual for Van Heemskerck compared to his panel works, suggests a larger-scale commission or an ambition to compete with Italian canvas painting on its own terms immediately following his Roman period.

The canvas support and the work's proximity to Van Heemskerck's Italian return make this among his most boldly Italianate early works. The nude figures of Venus and Mars display the Michelangelesque musculature and volumetric modelling Van Heemskerck absorbed in Rome, while Vulcan's forge provides a warm, orange-lit spatial setting unlike the neutral backgrounds of his portrait panels. The net is typically rendered as a barely visible gold mesh ensnaring the adulterous pair.