Venus, seated on the left, looks over her shoulder to a mirror held by Cupid at the lower right and adjusts her hair. Mars, wearing a helmet, stands behind her with his right hand on her shoulder and reaches to remove the mirror. The inventive composition and the fluent paint handling in areas such as Mars’s helmet and Venus’s head, hands and drapery make it possible that this painting is an autograph work by Veronese, however in other areas, such as the footstool, the handling seems weak, suggesting that it may simply be a good production of his studio. The compositional type belongs with a group of mythological and allegorical paintings produced in Veronese’s studio c. 1580, which were in part stimulated by the taste of Rudolph II. It is possible that this painting is connected with a painting made for the Emperor, although it is easily confused with smaller cabinet-pictures made by Veronese in the same genre.