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In this large, but still sketchlike panel, the goddess of love waits while her husband forges the armour for Achilles's Trojan conquest. The broken-winged, serpent-entwined lance on the ground refers to the caduceus of Mercury, Cupid's father. The free brushwork and breadth of his Italianate pictorialism make Floris parent to generations of Northern artists. All his figures share a painterly freedom and grandeur that proved a harbinger of Rubens.
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