Venus Lamenting over Dead Adonis

Putti lead a tied wild boar to Venus, who is mourning the death of Adonis. Another putto moves out of the clouds and brings them Venus’ chariot. According to the myth, Venus failed to prevent the death of Adonis, even though she had previously warned him. On her way to Cyprus she had a bad premonition, turned her chariot around but arrived too late. Adonis was killed by a wild boar chased by dogs (Ovidius 1958, pp. 290-317).

The essential moments of the tragedy are placed in the first plan. The small articulated crowd of characters towards the center of the painting is almost invisible and perhaps without significant content.

Only those moments which are critical to the story are strongly lit. Otherwise, light is used only to indicate the depth of the scene and to model shapes. The space in the cutout is made complete with color contrasts, and is based on the pair of gods and on the arriving group.

It is almost certain that the landscape and the characters were not painted by the same painter. The figure painter and the landscape painter – and perhaps also an animal painter – take different approaches in relation to the subject pictured, but also in the way they use contours and modeling and choose different shades of color. Frans Wouters was born to a family of artists, trained in the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen 1577 – Antwerp 1640) and worked at several royal courts. In auction catalogs he is often presented as cooperating with other painters, mostly as a figure painter.

Mythological landscapes gave room for picturing nature imaginatively and for showing very personal styles. Their effectiveness was increased through specialization and it was possible to maintain quality – hence the concordance of joint efforts by several painters in one painting is regarded as the criterion of quality.

Zuzana Ludiková ● ŠVANTNEROVÁ, Jana a kol.: Tieň minulosti / The Shadow of the Past, Bratislava: Neinvestičný fond židovského kultúrneho dedičstva – Menorah, 2013.