Venus and Adonis

Venus twists around to clasp the young hunter Adonis, trying to hold him back, but he strains away toward his eager dogs and the hunt that Ovid tells us will kill him (Metamorphoses, Book 10). Titian painted this for Philip II as one of his poesie, large mythologies drawn from the poets, and set Venus seen from behind to play against the front-facing nude of his Danae, also in this collection. Cupid sleeps in the shade, his bow hung aside, love powerless to stop what is coming. The straining diagonal of the two bodies makes the picture a study in desire and departure.