Benjamin west: Omnia Vincit Amor (1809)

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA)

A painting by the British North American artist Benjamin West (1738 – 1820). This painting is an allegory. The title "Omnia vincit Amor" (= Love triumphs over everything) is a quotation from Virgil’s Eclogues (Virgil, Ecl. 10.69). Venus, the goddess of love, is standing on the left with her son Amor (he is clinging to her draperies). A young man, probably Hymenaeus or Hymen, the god of marriage, is holding a flaming torch with his right hand and grasps in his left cords that leash an eagle. The eagle and the other animals symbolize three of the four classical elements: eagle = air, lion = earth, a hippocampus = water. The element of fire is represented by the flaming torch. Painting from 1809.