Peter Paul Rubens, The Birth of Venus

This design for a silver basin depicts a number of episodes from classical myth. Venus, the goddess of love, steps out of the giant shell from which, according to Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymns, she was born. The birth of Venus from the sea is a playful subject for a basin design: as the container was drained, the figure of the goddess would gradually emerge.

Venus faces the viewer and squeezes seawater out of her long hair as she is helped to the shore of Cyprus by her attendants, who may be Nereids (sea nymphs), Horae (goddesses of the seasons) or the Three Graces. One holds out a string of pearls for the goddess to adorn herself. In the sky above, Venus‘ son Cupid and a figure who may represent Persuasion lower a crown onto the goddess’s head. To their right, the wind god Zephyr blows the boat ashore while, in the sea below, a personification of Desire rides Triton, who announces the event of Venus’ birth by blowing a large conch shell.

Reclining in the border above the scene are the sea god Neptune, who holds his three-pronged trident, and his wife, Salacia, goddess of the sea. They watch over other figures in the border – the putti playing with swans or blowing conch shells while riding horses and the nymphs riding highly stylised dolphins and swimming in the water. At the base of the border, in a reference to Venus’ role as the goddess of love, the lovers Cupid and Psyche embrace. Despite the commotion that surrounds them, the pair only have eyes for each other.

The dish shown in this design was made for Charles I, King of England; an accompanying ewer depicts the ‘Judgement of Paris’. Both designs were cast in silver by the Antwerp silversmith Theodore Rogiers. These mythological subjects might have been chosen to flatter the King by presuming his familiarity with the classical authors Hesiod and Homer. While the objects themselves no longer survive (and no oil sketch for the ewer is known), they are recorded in a print made by Jacob Neeffs in 1660.