Adonis1.0043_Veronese

ogcma@byu

ClCv241

Mastery

MythMatters

Prado online gallery
OGCMA s.v. "Adonis"
Ovid Met. 10.529-559

Paolo Veronese, "Venus and Adonis Asleep," c. 1580 ,Prado, Madrid, inv. 482

ML 8th edition, plate 7: "Veronse transforms the text of Ovid."

Veronese treated the subjects of Adonis and Venus subject variously on several other canvases. This painting is copied at least once, at Christ Church, Oxford, picture gallery.

Venus and Cupid tending to a sleeping Bacchus, with dogs, in a wooded landscape

Venus' infatuation with Adonis has come to this: the goddess is serving him, as she fans him during a break in the hunt. The hunt will prove Adonis' undoing; and Cupid tries to hold back the eager dog from wakening the hunter. In her distraction, Venus has not learned Adonis' fate; however, the darkening sky foreshadows doom.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.