Vénus et Adonis. Paysage de Grottaferrata (right half of Venus and Adonis)

Poussin painted this in Rome around 1625, early in his long Italian career, for Cassiano dal Pozzo, a scholar and collector who fed the young Frenchman a steady diet of ancient art and antiquarian learning. The picture set the lovers Venus and Adonis in a broad Roman landscape near the abbey of Grottaferrata, with a reclining river god among the greenery. Then, sometime in the 18th century, someone cut the canvas in two. This is the right-hand piece, the landscape half, which reached the museum in Montpellier in 1825. The other half, carrying the figures of the lovers, drifted into a separate collection abroad. For nearly 200 years the two lived apart, until 2012, when they were brought back together and shown side by side here in Montpellier.