/internal/media/dispatcher/119226/fullMars and Venus with Cupid1809[Leopold Kiesling]Leopold KieslingCarrara marbleHaving completed his training in Vienna, Leopold Kiesling received a scholarship for an extended residency in Rome. There, the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova recognized Kiesling’s talent and became an important patron of the Austrian artist. With Canova’s support, Kiesling secured a prestigious commission for a marble group, Mars and Venus with Cupid. During the Napoleonic Wars, the sculpture was read in political terms: Love, in the guise of Venus, seeks to dissuade Mars, the god of war, from battle by offering a laurel branch. In the wake of Napoleon Bonaparte’s marriage to Marie Louise of Austria in 1810, the group, completed in 1809, came to be understood as an allegory of hope for peace. This led to the mistaken assumption that the court had commissioned the sculpture with the forthcoming marriage in mind. Sculpturehttps://sammlungtest.belvedere.at/objects/8355/rdf