2-733-337 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Landscape with Venus and Adonis, 1580s. Venus, the goddess of love, unsuccessfully tries to dissuade her mortal lover Adonis from hunting the boar that would eventually kill him. The artist nestles this story in the foreground of an expansive view with Germanic architecture, rather than a classical setting. Woodlands were relatively new subjects in European painting and this work points toward the full-blown forested landscapes of the 1600s, seen in the adjacent gallery of Dutch art.