Venus and Adonis

In Ovid's telling, Venus fell for the young hunter Adonis and begged him to keep away from dangerous game. He went hunting anyway, and a wild boar killed him. Spranger paints the moment of parting. Adonis, spear in hand and two hunting dogs at his side, is already pulling away while the naked goddess clings to him, and down in the corner Cupid throws up an arm in a gesture the Rijksmuseum reads as despair. The long, slender bodies with small heads are typical of Spranger, the setting less so. The museum notes that the hilly landscape looks old-fashioned for the late 1580s, because he borrowed it from a painting made early in the 16th century. It is crowded with satyrs and nymphs, grazing goats, a castle on a crag, and two white doves, the birds of Venus, drinking at a stream.