Venus and Adonis (Titian)

There is a precise date for only one version, that in the Prado in Madrid, which is documented in correspondence between Titian and Philip II of Spain in 1554.

The Prado version is set at dawn and shows the young Adonis pulling himself away from Venus, his lover.

High in the sky, a figure rides a chariot; this is either Venus from later in the story, or Apollo or Sol, representing the dawn.

Venus sits on a rock covered with a rich tablecloth with gold braid edges and buttons (not a military jacket, as sometimes thought).

In Book X of Ovid's Metamorphoses Adonis is a beautiful youth, a royal orphan, who spends his time hunting.

[9] They are in most respects the same, but the Farnese type has a tighter crop on the subject and a wider shape, losing most of the sky.

Adonis' raised hand is just below the picture edge, so the feathers on the spear are not seen, nor is the chariot in the sky, though the sun bursts through clouds in about the same place.

[14] It was part of a series of mythological paintings called "poesie" ("poems") intended for King Philip II of Spain.

The Venetian critic Lodovico Dolce praised (in the Prado version) the "marvellous piece of dexterity ... in that one recognises in her hindmost parts here the distension of the flesh caused by sitting ... there is no man so sharp of sight and discernment that he does not believe when he sees her that she is alive; no one so chilled by age or so hard in his makeup that he does not feel himself growing warm and tender, and the whole of his blood stirring in his veins.

[19] Writing of this and Titian's other mythological paintings from the same years, Sydney Joseph Freedberg said they "convey the sense that an extraordinary reach of classical expression has been achieved in them, as sensuous experience, as much as that of the spirit and the mind, assumes the stature of idea.

... As overt decorative virtue yields to depth of meaning in these works colour becomes quieter, but in compensation is infused by the rougher vibrance taken on by light".

[20] Once in a private Lausanne collection, it failed to sell at Christie's in 1998, but was offered for auction at Sotheby's in 2022, with an estimate of 8 to 12 million pounds.

[21] The death of Adonis is included in the background, and the figure in the chariot in the sky is certainly Venus as it is pulled by swans, a traditional attribute.

Dated c. 1554 and attributed to Titian's workshop, although the master himself may have done the "bold underdrawing", and painted the head of Adonis and Venus' hair.

These include the following: Adonis has no undergarment covering his shoulder and upper arm (to the right); Venus does not sit on a white cloth; the mouth of the vessel faces away from the viewer.

It was one of thirty-eight paintings from John Julius Angerstein's collection acquired by the British government in 1824 for £57,000 which formed the original nucleus of the National Gallery.

Penny sees it as a workshop replica based on the London version, but "a good case could be made for his intervention" in places, such as "the painting of the tremulous lights" on the cloth Venus sits on.

It was selected by a member of the consortium, Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, as part of his share, although he did not keep it long.

It returned to Italy from Saint Petersburg thanks to the Venetian merchant Pietro Concolo, to be eventually bought by the Roman Giovanni Torlonia, 1st Prince of Civitella-Cesi.

The museum says: "Recent conservation work has enabled us to confirm that rather than being a late 17th-century copy, this painting is very likely to have been made in Titian's workshop in the second half of the 16th century."

[32] The National Gallery has a small Boy with a Bird which is effectively the detail of Cupid, except lacking his wings.

To Penny it seems "largely autograph" (by Titian himself), and from the various differences in detail he suggests it was "planned, if not painted, at the same time as [the Prado version, that is 1554] or perhaps a little earlier".

Paul Joannides has suggested this, hypothesising that the original lost Farnese painting, or yet another version, may date back to the 1520s or even earlier.

It is conceded that the tighter composition is more dramatic, and the "extended" left side of the Prado type has been described as "confusing" in all versions,[26] the "pose and position" of the new third hound at the rear "complicated and difficulty to decipher", and the whole "clumsy as an arrangement".

[41] The Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega (1562–1635) was "fascinated" by the painting, and mentions it in several plays, with a print of it featuring as a stage prop in one of them.