The identities of the male and female protagonists in the Allegory of Marriage (Plate 1) have been much discussed and debated. In his famous interpretation of the painting, Erwin Panofsky ruled out the identification of the man in armour as the Marquis d’Avalos. According to Panofsky, the man and woman in Titian's painting are no other than the mythological figures of Mars and Venus, as construed in a late antique tradition in medieval mythography, in which their union produced a daughter named Harmonia (harmony). Such mythological depictions were often used as models for double portraits, so although we do not know the subject of the portrayal, Panofsky assumed that the painting is also a portrait in mythological disguise. He grounded his interpretation on two kinds of texts: The Neoplatonic reading of the union of Venus and Mars and the astrological reading of the Venus-Mars myth. According to latter, the coming of the month of April (signified by Venus) after the month of March (signified by Mars) is a sign of Venus's mollifying force over the ferocious Mars, as expressed in the accounts of Lucretius's De rerum natura, and Statius's Thebaid, to which I return shortly.

In identifying the protagonists as Venus and Mars, Panofsky set the tone for future investigation and interpretation of the painting, although two components remained enigmatic— the male figure's gesture and the glass sphere.