Jupiter hurling thunderbolts at the Vices by Paolo Veronese 1551-1556

February 28, 2022

Jupiter hurling thunderbolts at the Vices by Paolo Veronese 1551-1556

"It's only the sword that Capys loves. For him, everything else is worthless, except an upright cock plunging into the depths of his buttocks. He only looks kindly upon a lover as long as he enjoys being stabbed by him. But whenever this stops, he drops his former friend and finds riders who are better endowed. Zeus, may the untrustworthy and loveless breed of pathics be destroyed, completely destroyed.

The minds of a pathic and a vile whore are the same. Both enjoy getting cash, being screwed and penetrated, fucked and pierced through, dowled and wedged open, gutted and battered. Neither of them is satisfied with a single rider, but they always enjoy gulping down whole the plunging cock of those who fuck them, one after another, and trying for bigger and thicker sinews that tumble around, search after all their guts, tear the deep chasm, of that fearful pit, and go on right to the middle of the navel. So to hell with the horny slut as well as the wide-arsed race of pathics. May our concern be for the Muses and a restrained life and a well, in the knowledge that this is pleasure, this is unadulterated joy, this is delight: not to be acquainted with people who enjoy disgraceful pleasure."

-Archilochus, The Poems 680-645 BCE

Jupiter hurling thunderbolts at the Vices by Paolo Veronese 1551-1556. Oil on canvas, 560x330cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. This oval ceiling painting was originally the central picture gracing the ceiling of the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci in the Doge's Palace. In 1797 it was confiscated by the art commissars of Napoleon Bonaparte and removed to Paris. In 1863 Jacopo di Andrea made a copy at the behest of the government, and this now replaces the looted original in Venice. A principal feature of the picture is the bold use of foreshortened perspectives, of which the ceiling painter was a supreme master. The sculpturally rounded figures stand out dramatically against the blue of the sky.