(piano music playing) Steven: We're in the Pitti
palace in Florence looking at The Consequences of War
by Peter Paul Rubens. It's a big painting full of very large, incredibly energetic figures. Beth: Mars heading off to
war being egged on by the fury Alekto and Venus, the
goddess of love, trying desperately to stop him. An
allegorical figure of Europe flings her arms up in
despair on the left and below allegorical figures representing the arts are about to be trampled by war. There's clearly a message here. Steven: Yeah, I think so. This was commissioned by a Flemish member of the Medici court during
the Thirty Years' War, a time when Europe was
experiencing enormous suffering and the consequences of war, couldn't have been more clear. You can see who these figures are. Venus, beautiful in the
classic rubenesque pose with a twisted torso reaching out. Look at the colors of her body. Beth: Yeah, she's got greens
and blues in her flesh. Steven: Look at the way her
right arm stretches out. She's holding back her lover,
Mars, holding his right arm, but she reaches out to
pull Alekto the fury away from her lover and to detach him and to change this momentum. Beth: Yeah. It reminds me of the
work that Goya will do. Beth: Yeah, he looks absolutely
mad and you get a sense immediately when you look
at this painting of a contrast between the
beauty of Venus and the madness and the ugliness
of Alekto and therefore the horrors of war personified. Steven: Alekto's terrified
fury, Mars looking back at Venus and then the tears that are
welling up in Europe's eyes, all of these are set against
each other creating this over the top emotion. Beth: You want to feels Europe's pain. Venus' attempts to stop
Mars and to detach Alekto are totally in vain.
Mars looks determined. He looks back at Venus, but he doesn't seem to feel much remorse. Steven: There is already
blood dripping from his sword, pointing to the arts that,
as you said, are about to be trampled. Among them you can see, perhaps, an architect holding a compass. You can see that Mars'
boot is trampling a book. A lute, the musical instrument,
but it's neck has been broken. and so you see the costs both to culture and also to human life. If you look just past
those allegorical figures, you can see the two figures, perhaps, a mother holding a child and
there's real terror there. Beth: But one senses overall
the inevitability of war for human beings. You know,
this is ... this is an unstoppable force and
all of the foreshortening that Rubens gives us, especially
of the allegorical figures on the lower right,
indicates the hopelessness of the situation. Things
can spill out, fall down, pour over and the power of
Mars and this sharp diagonal from lower left to upper right
is completely unstoppable. Steven: There's an
incredible kind of momentum, the words that you were
using to describe it, seemed absolutely appropriate to me. There's a kind of
momentum, a kind of energy, a kind of an inevitability and the brushwork itself,
the colors, the composition and the madness of the storm on the right, all of this speaks to
the overwhelming tragedy, inevitability, the horror of war. (piano music playing)