Venus and Adonis

A young hunter lies on the ground with his dogs around him, and a goddess bends over him. In 1790 the Borghese inventory called this picture Diana and Endymion. The mistake has a cause inside the painting. Around 1600, painters in Emilia aimed for composure and beauty, and Scarsellino hid the young man's fatal wound. The wild boar that killed him is nowhere to be seen. An older Borghese list, from the 1620s, had named it correctly as the dead Adonis with Venus. Besides Ovid, Scarsellino drew on a Greek poem, Bion's Lament for Adonis, in which hounds and nymphs mourn with the goddess. High in the clouds at the right, Venus appears a second time, in a chariot drawn by white swans, coming down after hearing his cries. Near the body, a small red anemone has sprung from his blood.