1584
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Landscape with Venus and Adonis is a 1584 unspecified by Gillis van Coninxloo, a Northern Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
In this 1580s painting, a lush forest wraps around Venus and Adonis. Venus reaches for Adonis while deer graze beside them. A boar lurks near their feet—future danger. Van Coninxloo sets this Greek myth in a real German-looking forest. He painted woods as a new subject, not just a backdrop. Most art showed gods in temples, not trees. Look up Gillis van Coninxloo (Netherlandish, 1544–1607) next.
Venus, the goddess of love, is unsuccessful in dissuading her mortal lover Adonis from hunting the boar that would eventually kill him. The artist nestles this story in the foreground of an expansive view with Germanic architecture, rather than a classical setting. Woodlands were relatively new subjects in European painting and this work points toward the full-blown forested landscapes of the 1600s.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Gillis van Coninxloo (now also referred to as Gillis van Coninxloo II and previously referred to as Gillis van Coninxloo III) (24 January 1544 – January 1607) was a Flemish painter of landscapes.
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