Venus ante el espejo

From the 16th century onwards artists paid increasingly greater attent ion to the myth of Venus, converting it into a vehicle for praising fe male beauty and powers of seduction. In his book Andreas Prater reveal s the immensely rich variety of themes and implicationsùaesthetic, mor al and even politicalùof VelázquezÆs Venus, showing the iconographic p recedents that make possible the interpretation of this fascinating an d much-debated painting whose modern vicissitudes include an attack su ffered in 1919 at the hands of an infuriated suffragette.áBorn in Teis endorf (Bavaria) in 1945, Andreas Prater studied art history, classica l archaeology, psychology and philosophy at Munich and Salzburg univer sities. After teaching atá Braunschweig, Munich and Giessen universiti es, he was appointed head of the Art History department at the Univers ity of Freiberg im Breisgau. The breadth of his interests, which range from the great artists of the baroque to ornamentation and the study of emblems, has led