Rijksmuseum

Venus and Adonis

Date

c. 1585 - c. 1590

Medium

panel, oil paint (paint)

Institution

Rijksmuseum

Venus, the goddess of love, warns her lover Adonis of the danger of the hunt. In vain, however, for he is killed by a wild boar. On the left, Cupid, the god of love, already gestures in despair. The tall, slender figures with small heads are characteristic of Spranger’s style. The hilly landscape is ‘old-fashioned’: the artist derived it from an early 16th-century painting.

The authoritative record is held by Rijksmuseum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.