Death of Adonis

Sebastiano painted this soon after 1512, just after leaving Venice for Rome, where the banker Agostino Chigi had hired him and where he fell under the spell of Michelangelo. The myth is Venus grieving over the beautiful young Adonis, killed by a wild boar, his pale body laid out on the left. The muscular weight of the figures comes straight from Michelangelo, whose Sistine ceiling Sebastiano could watch being painted. But the real surprise sits behind them. Across the water Sebastiano set his home city of Venice, the Doge's Palace and the churches along the lagoon, and the bell-tower of Saint Mark's still stands there without the spire that was added to it in 1514.