"Venus disarming Amor" in a medallion surrounded by plants, fruits, insects and shellfish

Joris Hoefnagel is one of the most important Northern European artists from the second half of the 16th century. Back in his own day, his fame rested on manuscript illuminations and cabinet miniatures (such as this); his work was amongst the most exquisite created in his day. The picture shows a strange mixture of motifs that do not make sense to modernday audiences, but which would have been decipherable to scholars from the artist's own time. Even so, we can make some progress towards understanding the images. The medallion's subject matter and inscription "Plus aloes quam mellis habent" (They contain more bitterness than sweetness) is a reference to how earthly love (the arrows of Amor/Cupid) always end up bringing pain even if it begins sweetly; a familiar moral lesson at the time. The inscription at the bottom, "Quatuor in rerum natura elementa" (the four elements of Nature) explains the flowers and fruits (which symbolise earth), butterflies (air), the other insects (fire), and the lobster (water). But we no longer know the significance of placing "The Four Elements" and "Venus Disarming Amor" within the same context. The knowledge that was active during the 16th century - and which was very much about how all of Creation was intervowen in a web of interconnected meanings - has largely been lost now. We can no longer "see" these overall connections, the vast intervowen fabric that made sense to people, at least to scholars, at that time.