Dying Adonis

Adonis lies dying in steep foreshortening, his body thrust back into the depth of the picture. The young hunter loved by Venus has been gored by a wild boar, and in Ovid's telling the goddess turns his blood into a flower. Here that has already begun, and a red anemone grows from the blood at the left. Venus herself is still far off, crossing the sky in her chariot drawn by swans. Goltzius painted the scene in 1609 on a square canvas just 76 centimetres a side, and it hangs turned on its point, as a diamond. That places the goddess in the topmost corner and pulls the frame in tight around the body. His monogram and the date, HG 1609, are at the right.