Venus and Adonis, c.1553/54
Tiziano Vecellio Tizian (c.1485-1576)

Titian - Venus and Adonis

The work is mentioned in a letter from Titian to Prince Philip and was enthusiastically praised by Ludovico Dolce in his dialogue on painting (1557). Titian's creation is not only a complex of images that are beautiful in themselves and full of vitality, as Dolce, with his fully naturalistic Renaissance taste, understood, but it is a dramatic concept achieved with great stylistic coherence.

The possession of a rich and subtle command of colour, the ability to bend the substance of the colour to the most intense tonalities and the most refined nuances, permit Titian to place his figures in open space and articulate their contrapuntal movements - the impatient movement of the young hunter, the tender gesture of Venus, who attempts to hold him back, are almost a presage of the imminent tragedy. And meanwhile there are the dogs, "so naturally painted they seem to sniff, bay and be full of eagerness to confront any wild beast" (L. Dolce).

Titian explained to Philip II that he had represented Venus from the back to distinguish her from the Danaé, which was to be its companion piece. Very likely, however, the painter has taken up a Hellenistic Maenad motif, echoed for example in the famous bas-relief of the Ara Grimani, which could be admired in the Venetian palace of the same name in the S. Maria Formosa district.