Venus and Adonis 1553-1554, (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid)

Venus and Adonis, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, close-up of Farnesina Fresco

In September of 1554, Titian sent to London, the second poesie, Venus and Adonis, painted for the future king, Philip II, recently married to Queen Mary Tudor of England.  This work was the first of many paintings (more than thirty painted and engraved copies are known) that Titian dedicated to the mythological theme of the love between Venus and Adonis, which he interpreted in various versions (most famous of those, in the Galleria Nazionale in Rome and the Metropolitan Museum in New York).  Now in the Prado Museum, Philip II’s poesie of Venus and Adonis is probably the most elaborate instance of contrapposto Titian ever undertook and is unmistakably inspired by the Psyche in the Farnesina fresco, the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche.  This  painting has been recognized as the reproduction of the original as the original had a horizontal crease when the picture was folded in half for shipment, which resulted in an irregular strip of paint loss along most of its width, but most noticeably in the figures where the impasto was thicker. The most distressed Philip sent the painted back to Titian for repair.  Consequently, it getting every detail just right, it robbed the replica of its spontaneity and Titian’s stronger, creative practice in developing his ideas during the execution of the work.  The second version shows Adonis and the quiver to conform to a more antiquarian aesthetic, perhaps at the suggestion of Dolce.  In addition, the white dove that nestles quietly next to Cupid’s foot has been eliminated from the replica along with all subsequent replicas or variants. 

Venus and Adonis, National Gallery, London

Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, Farnesina Fresco

Using an unrestraint and imaginative artistic approach, Titian focused on the dramatic potential of Ovid’s myth from Metamorphoses, however, Ovid’s text and other classical sources does not the episode when Adonis resists Venus’s pleads and embrace to dispatch with his dogs on a fierce boar hunt. Titian shows the goddess passionately pleading with her lover not to depart for the hunt, since she has a premonition that he will be killed by a wild boar.  Crisp contoured forms and cool tonalities focus on the moment of Adonis’s self-denial as well as a number of other iconographic elements that reflect the hunter’s action, such as the sleeping and disarmed Cupid with his bow and arrows hanging in a nearby tree with the white dove at his foot suggests the powerlessness of intense love as well as the large, overturned golden urn.  The fashionable man’s coat that Venus sits upon implies that Adonis has removed his past apparel in favor of a hunting tunic, which reveals his conversion from worldliness to moderation. Additionally, the lush green landscape where Venus is sitting gradually becomes a barren terrain that awaits the hunter as he moves away from the goddess in favor for the hunt.  The story ends with the death of Adonis from the wounds inflicted by a wild boar and later; Venus transforms him into an everlasting anemone (a flower quick to blossom and quick to die).

One may wonder about the brilliant burst of light that radiates from the opening in the sky.  It has been implied that the unidentified figure is a reminder of Venus subsequent departure in her chariot drawn by doves (rather than swans in Ovid’s myth) and the shooting golden rays of light towards the grove of trees below, indicates where Adonis, almost invisible, lies wounded until his death.

Venus and Adonis, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Titian chose an essentially square picture field, departing from the uniformity in showing it with the first Poesie, Danae.  On the other hand, Titian continues his interests in portraying the Poesie, in his own narrative interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, showing the female nude from different points of view as well as showing the eccentric states of love.

In 1554, in his letter to Philip II, Titian states his interests in portraying the Poesie in his own narrative and interpretation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses as well as showing the female nude from several points of view and the emotion of love from different points of view.  In Danae, love is fulfilled and the mutual love of god and mortal woman, whereas in Venus and Adonis love is denied, a goddess rejected by a mortal man.  Neither Ovid, nor any other author, ancient or modern, had described exactly what Titian represented in his versions of Venus and Adonis, a new emotional situation as who abandons the goddess of Love?