Venus and Adonis

Venus and Adonis, circa 1560, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, depicts the Ovidian myth of Venus's desperate love for the mortal hunter Adonis, whom she tried in vain to dissuade from the boar hunt that would kill him. Bordone's version belongs to a tradition of Venetian erotic mythologies — the poesie — that Titian had established for Philip II of Spain and that became one of the most successful pictorial genres of the mid-sixteenth century. By 1560 Bordone was responding to his master Titian's greatest mythological canvases while adding his own elongated Mannerist figure types. The Kunsthistorisches Museum's Venetian holdings are extraordinary, and this painting sits naturally alongside comparable mythologies by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto.

The painting employs the classic Venetian erotic mythology format: nude female figure (Venus) restraining a clothed male (Adonis) in a lush landscape. Bordone's Venus is painted with warm glazed flesh tones in direct inheritance from Titian, while Adonis's hunting dress adds rich textile description. Dogs and hunting equipment fill the foreground with narrative context.