Venus and Adonis by Jacopo Amigoni is in private collection. The size of the work is 216 x 150 cm and is made as an oil on canvas.
This was not Amigoni’s only treatment of the narrative of Adonis taking leave of Venus. The subject, as with Jupiter and Io, is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and describes how the goddess Venus implored Adonis not to leave her to go off on a hunting trip during which he is gored by a wild boar and dies. In another, earlier, horizontal canvas in the Accademia, Venice, Amigoni has interpreted the narrative in a very different light.
Adonis seems much more eager to depart from his lover and looks at her with an almost impatient gaze as he tears himself from her embrace.4 During his English period Amigoni painted another version of Venus and Adonis, again in a horizontal format, but here Adonis leaves for hunting whilst Venus is asleep so there is a more languid poignant feel to the image and none of the gentle emotion of the present work… Read more in Sothebys
About the Artist: Italian painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period Jacopo Amigoni was born in Venice. He painted both mythological and religious scenes. His style influenced Giuseppe Nogari. Amigoni’s independent career began in 1715 when he painted the altarpiece Christ the Risen Meets His Mother for the Frauenkirche in Munich, which is now in the church of Frauenwörth Abbey on the island of Frauenchiemsee, although it is there at certain times of the year is replaced by a painting of the blessed Irmengard von Chiemsee… Read more
