Venus and Adonis

Giorgio Ghisi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In his narrative poem 'Metamorphoses' Ovid tells us that Venus, grazed by Cupid's arrow, fell in love with Adonis and urged him not to hunt dangerous animals. Ignoring her advice, the handsome youth was killed by a wild boar. In antiquity, Adonis was worshipped as a god of the seasons who spent each winter in the Underworld and returned each spring, causing Venus, equated with the earth's fertility, to rejoice. In Ghisi's engraving, based on his brother's design, we see Adonis' dead body being nuzzled by the boar near a bare tree in the background. In the foreground, Adonis receives Venus' caresses in a verdant bower, his foot resting on the boar's head to demonstrate his victory over winter.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art