"Venus and Adonis"

Titian (also known as Tiziano Vecellio) and Workshop

About 1555-60. Oil on canvas, 63 inches high by 77 3/8 inches wide.

This painting, as tall as an average person and as wide as a seven foot couch, fills an entire wall in its massive one foot wide frame. It is a dynamic woodland scene of a hunter in full stride tearing himself away from the last embraces of his beloved as his dogs impatiently sniff the air and strain at their leashes, while Cupid slumbers on a hillside in the background. Their figures dominate the expanse of the painting.

A boyish, curly-headed, muscular Adonis is at center. His upper lip bears the first downy shadow of a mustache; his feet are bare, his strong calves are attired in leggings of animal hide, and a quiver is strapped across his half-bare chest where the draperies of a rose and white tunic have been torn open. His right hand is extended behind him clutching a six-foot spear as one would hold a walking stick; his muscular left arm restrains three animated wolf hounds whose leashes are curled around his hand. Two of the three sinewy beasts tug at their leashes; the third, the one closest to us, cowers to the left, its tail between its legs.
Adonis glances at the nude figure of Venus, in the foreground to the left of center.
Her blond hair braided tightly about her head with strings of pearls, she gazes into Adonis's face--her lips are parted, the whites of her eyes bulging. Seated on maroon velvet draperies with her back toward us, her bent legs are extended to the left, while she twists her body to the right and thrusts her arms around Adonis's chest, like an anchor, as though to restrain him. But his rosy cheeks are placid and composed, his stride uninterrupted. Beside the couch in the lower left corner, a golden chalice has been dashed to the ground.