Venus and Adonis

Ovid tells this story without a farewell. In the Metamorphoses Venus warns Adonis about wild beasts and then flies off in her chariot, and he goes hunting alone. The scene of the goddess clinging to the young man as he pulls away was an invention of Titian's in the 1550s, and some critics objected that it was not in the poem. Some 60 years later, in 1614, Goltzius chose exactly that moment for this canvas, nearly two metres wide. Venus is still trying to hold Adonis back, while he has already picked up his hunting spear. The museum also tells what follows, in a version where the boar that wounds him to death is steered by Mars, the jealous god of war. It counts the picture among the major works of early Dutch classicism and names Rubens among the painters Goltzius drew on.