Frozen Venus (Venus frigida), Peter Paul Rubens (1614) Venus Frigida (Dutch: Bevroren Venus) is a 1614 painting by artist Peter Paul Rubens. Here, Rubens paints Venus as a mythological goddess of beauty and love. The goddess sits shivering with cold in the foreground. At her feet sits Amor, her son; he has exchanged his love arrows for Venus' loincloth. In this way, Amor tries to protect himself from the cold. Behind her stands a satyr. Rubens is thus referring to a saying by the Roman author Publius Terentius Afer: 'Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus' or 'Without Ceres and Bacchus Venus freezes' which means Without Bread and Wine there is no love. From the Renaissance onwards, a lot of artists drew inspiration from this age-old saying. Painting Venus was instrumental in the development of Rubens' voluptuous style of nude painting.
