a disparity just as marked in the early 21st century. In 1873, it appears that The Otter Hunt by Edwin Landseer, who died that year, was sold privately for £10,000. Piero di Cosimo Though there are other paintings of Venus and Mars, Botticelli's work is often compared and contrasted with the Venus, Mars and Cupid by Piero di Cosimo (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, c. 1505), a younger Florentine painter who had probably seen the Botticelli. The painting probably dates to around 1500-05, and later belonged to Giorgio Vasari. The similarities include the two figures reclining, with Mars asleep and Venus awake, and a group of infant attendants who play with Mars' armour, in a setting of bushes opening to a landscape. They contrast in atmosphere and most other aspects, and Piero has included an infant Cupid, a wide landscape and some of the animals that he loved to paint. For Erwin Panofsky, the Piero is an "enchantingly primitivistic pastoral" where Botticelli's version is a "solemnly classicizing allegory". Notes References Avery-Quash, Susanna, in Gordon, Dillian, National Gallery Catalogues (new series): The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume 1, 2003, Bellingham, David, "Aphrodite Deconstructed: Botticelli's Venus and Mars in the National Gallery, London", in Brill's Companion to Aphrodite, eds. Amy C. Smith, Sadie Pickup, 2010, BRILL, , 9789047444503, google books Davies, Martin, Catalogue of the Earlier Italian Schools, National Gallery Catalogues, 1961, reprinted 1986, Dempsey, Charles, "Botticelli, Sandro", Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 15 May 2017. subscription required "Ettlingers": Leopold Ettlinger with Helen S. Ettlinger, Botticelli, 1976, Thames & Hudson (World of Art), Fermor, Sharon, Piero Di Cosimo: Fiction, Invention, and Fantasìa, 1993, Reaktion Books, , 9780948462368, google books Legouix, Susan, Botticelli, 2004 (rev'd ed.), Chaucer Press, Hartt, Frederick, History of Italian Renaissance Art, (2nd ed.) 1987, Thames & Hudson (U.S. Harry N. Abrams), Langmuir, Erica, The National Gallery Companion Guide, 1997 revised edition, National Gallery, London, (Yale University Press, 2016 ed., ) Lightbown, Ronald, Sandro Botticelli: Life and Work, Thames & Hudson, 1989 Potterton, Homan. The National Gallery. London: Thames & Hudson, 1977 Reitlinger, Gerald; The Economics of Taste, Vol I: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices 1760–1960, Barrie and Rockliffe, London, 1961 Wind, Edgar, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, 1967 ed., Peregrine Books Literary sources Ficino, Marsilio, Commentary on the Symposium: De Amore, from Oration V, chapter 8 Fowler, H. W. and F. G. (eds.) The Works