Venus and Adonis

Venus, the goddess of love, fell for the young hunter Adonis and begged him to keep away from dangerous game, and a wild boar killed him all the same. Veronese painted this small version of the story around 1586, late in his life, as the companion of the Hercules and Deianira that hangs beside it. The two pictures left Venice together. In 1636 both belonged to Bartolomeo della Nave, a Venetian merchant with one of the largest private picture collections in the city. Two years later the English ambassador in Venice bought much of that collection for his brother-in-law, the Scottish Marquess of Hamilton. When Hamilton was executed in 1649 his paintings were sold, and by 1659 this pair was in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm.