Venus and Adonis

17^th Century on Wood Panel

 

Of deaths and flowery resurrections the most famous was that of Adonis.  Every year the Greek girls mourned for him and every year they rejoiced when his flower, the bold-red anemone, the windflower, was seen blooming again. Venus (Aphrodite) loved him, the Goddess of Love, who pierces with her shafts the hearts of gods and men alike was fated herself to suffer that same piercing pain.

She saw him when he was born and even then loved him and decided he should be hers.  She carried him to Persephone, the wife of Hades (Pluto) to take charge of him for her but Persephone loved him too and would not give him back to Venus, not even when the goddess went down to the underworld to get him.  Neither Goddess would yield, and finally Zeus himself had to judge between them.  He decided that Adonis would spend half the year with each, the autumn and winter with Persephone the spring and summer with Venus.

All the time he was with Venus she sought only to please him.  He was keen for the chase, and often she would leave her swan-drawn car in which she was used to glide at her ease through the air and follow him along rough woodland ways dressed like a huntress. But one sad day she happened not to be with him and he tracked down a mighty boar.  With his hunting dogs he brought the beast to bay.  He hurled his spear at it, but he only wounded it and before he could spring away, the boar mad with pain rushed at him and gored him with its great tusks. Venus in her winged car high over the earth heard her lover’s groan and flew to him. 

He was softly breathing his life away, the dark blood flowing down his skin of snow and his eyes growing heavy and dim.  She kissed him, but Adonis knew not that she kissed him as he died.  Cruel as his wound was, the wound in her heart was deeper. She spoke to him, although she knew he could not hear her:

“You die, O thrice desired,

And my desire has flown like a dream.  

Gone with you is the girdle of my beauty. 

But I myself must live who am a goddess

And may not follow you.

Kiss me but once again, the last long kiss

Until I draw your soul within my lips

And drink down all your love.”

 

The mountains all were calling and the oak trees answering,

Oh woe, woe for Adonis He is dead. 

And Echo cried in answer, Oh, woe, woe for Adonis.

And all the Loves wept for him and all the Muses too.

 

But down in the black underworld Adonis could not hear them, nor see the crimson flower that sprang up where each drop of his blood had stained the earth.

 

Thank you Edith Hamilton, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses

 

One of the most popular themes of Renaissance painting, the theme of Venus and Adonis derives from Ovid's Metamorphoses (book X), an important Italian version of which was made by Titian's friend Lodovico Dolce (1508/10–1568), with interpolations that had an echo in Ovidian paintings for the next two centuries.

 

This panel was strengthened with back supports and cleaned in the late 1980’s.

It is an adze hewn panel.

The frame is 19^th century.

 

Painting:  21-1/2” high by 30” wide

Frame:     30” high by 38-1/4” wide