The Oyster-eater

Any seventeenth-century viewer would have easily recognized what readily escapes viewers today: the oysters are laden with carnal overtones. According to the ancient mythographers, Aphrodite (known to the Romans as Venus), was conceived in an oyster shell which subsequently transported her to the island of Cyprus. To ancient and early modern minds, Aphrodite symbolized love, sex, and fertility; such concepts were also linked, by association, to oysters.