The Amazement of the Gods

          

          This painting was painted by Hans Von Aachen, and it is unknown when but people speculate between 1590 and 1600. This painting was set in an age where the primary style was mannerism. This style lasted from the end of the Italian renaissance to the emergence of the Baroque style. This style was made to agree with the harmonious ideas of many renaissance painters such as Da Vinci and Raphael (Mannerism). It is famous for its stressing of intellectual ideas and putting artificiality over realism in the works of art. This painting shows all the Roman gods standing in awe as Jupiter chooses to love Minerva and abandons Venus. With this painting, Aachen is trying to show how gods are human-like and how they too can fall prey to the whimsical needs of their emotions.
          This painting can also be interpreted as a glimpse of the unknown. Humans today don’t fully know if there is a god or not; if there is, then how many are there? Are they all-powerful or are they just greater than us? Did they create the universe or are they as clueless to how it was formed as we are. These types of questions can somewhat be explained through this painting, as we see the gods as human-like, who too feel the need to satisfy their emotions. This puts them as not all powerful, but more so than we. This shows us what we do not understand and what we may not for hundreds of years more to come. This is the unknown.