Venus and Adonis

Ovid tells the story in his Metamorphoses. Venus falls for the young hunter Adonis and begs him to keep away from dangerous beasts. He goes hunting anyway, and a wild boar kills him. The painter shows the moment just before he leaves. Venus lifts a finger toward him in warning, Adonis strokes her chin to reassure her, and Cupid hovers above them in the air. The canvas belongs to Cambiaso's late period, after 1565, most likely the late 1560s or the 1570s. He returned to the subject many times, on canvas and on paper. In 1650 a guidebook to the villa by Iacomo Manilli listed it correctly as a Cambiaso, under the plain description "Two Lovers with Cupid in the Air". The family inventory of 1693 gave it to another painter, Pomarancio, and the right name came back only in 1790.