The Birth of Adonis

This little panel began life as decoration on the front of a cassone, one of the ornate chests a wealthy household kept for a bride's linens, so it was made to be seen up close in a bedroom, not hung in a gallery. It tells Ovid's story of the birth of Adonis, and it tells the whole thing at once. At the centre the child is lifted from his mother as she turns into a myrrh tree, with the lovers of his conception on one side and Venus, his future love, on the other. It is an early work, painted around 1506 in the world of Giorgione, and for a long time it was given to Giorgione himself before scholars reassigned it to the young Titian. A few still argue for other hands.