Venus and Cupid at the Forge of Vulcan

In classical mythology, Vulcan (Hephaestus in the Greek pantheon) is the god of fire, metallurgy, and blacksmithing. Often depicted at his forge, Vulcan is portrayed as an archetypal “maker” or builder, and thereby often associated with the other arts and engineering sciences. Here, in a scene based on a grisaille by Maerten van Heemskerck, Vulcan and his assistants are shown forging a wing for his son Cupid, while the boy and his mother Venus look on. A popular subject in Renaissance art, Vulcan’s crafting of the wing shows that even the most ethereal things—poetry, love, spiritual ascent—might owe something to rather more muscular acts of construction. Even before the Scientific Revolution, myths like these demonstrated confidence that knowledge of the world was continuous with and emergent from the body.