1518
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Birth of Adonis is a 1518 by Benedetto Montagna, a Renaissance work, depicting Visitation, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a small infant with oddly long arms reaching out of a split tree trunk. The baby looks like he’s climbing out of wood, not born the usual way. The tree isn’t just a prop—its rough bark curls back like curtains on a stage. This story comes from ancient myths. Myrrah, the mother, was turned into a tree after a terrible act. The artist hides the weirdness in plain sight, making the myth feel normal. Look for more woodwork tricks like this at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
With tiny hands outstretched, the infant Adonis emerges from a prominent tree. Benedetto Montagna depicts the babe as if miraculously extracted from the bark in the manner of Eve’s creation from Adam’s side. But close attention to the sinuous trunk reveals Adonis to be actually born of a wooden womb. His mother Myrrah, after conceiving incestuously, pleaded that the gods deny her both life and death for her crime: she was thus transformed into a tree. Often moralized for later Christian audiences, tales such as this from Ovid’s popular Metamorphoses warned the viewer against following taboo…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Benedetto Montagna (c. 1480–1555/58) was an Italian engraver and painter. Montagna was born in Vicenza, the son of the leading painter of the city, Bartolomeo Montagna, with whom he trained and perhaps continued to…
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