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Landscape with the Story of Venus and Adonis

Creator

Flemish Artist · 1534–1593

Renowned for his miniatures, Hans Bol learned his trade from two uncles, who were also painters. At age fourteen he was apprenticed to a painter of *Waterschilderen* , large-scale scenes painted on canvas using opaque watercolor or tempera. *Waterschilderen,* a specialty of artists in Mechelen, were used as wall decorations instead of expensive tapestries. According to Karel Van Mander, Bol's larg

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Date: 1589
Medium: Gouache heightened with gold, on vellum
Culture: Flemish
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

Hans Bol painted this unusual miniature in two parts: the central landscape, painted on parchment mounted on wood, and the framing design, painted directly on wood. Both parts tell the story of the beautiful youth Adonis from Ovid's *Metamorphoses.* In the main panel, Venus and Adonis embrace before he leaves on the hunt shown in the distance, in which he is killed by a boar. Clockwise from left, the frame's ovals show subsidiary incidents: Adonis's mother Myrrha commits incest with her father; turned into the myrrh tree as punishment, Myrrha bears their son, Adonis; Venus is struck with love for Adonis; blood springing from the dead Adonis turns into the anemone flower. In the frame, Bol combined the cartouches and trophies of a three-dimensional picture frame with illusionistic borders reminiscent of manuscript illumination. His materials--opaque color and gold paint on parchment--also follow the tradition of manuscript illumination.

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