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July 24, 2008
Veronese's Allegories of Love: Scorn
A man is tormented by desire for a chaste woman.
Eros is savagely hitting the man with his bow, embodying the pangs of desire and not those of love or why else there would be statues of Pan - holding his flute in a suggestive way - and a satyr in the background ruins? It's the male as a sexual animal and the woman-victim running away and shown the way by Chastity symbolized by an ermine, an animal which won't let its white fur get dirty.
The woman has the upper hand in the moral dispute.
Posted by claudia