Venus Mourning the Death of Adonis

Based in part on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this masterpiece is one of the works that translated into visual terms Giovan Battista Marino’s poem “L’Adone” (Adonis), and was painted very soon after the poem’s publication in Paris in 1623. Several inspirational sources and quotations can be observed in this canvas, e.g. the Hellenistic Laoco�n group (at the left of the painting) and Raphael’s Entombment (in reverse, at right), Caravaggio’s Entombment.