Venus discovers the body of Adonis 1550-1560 circa

Venus discovers the body of Adonis 1550-1560 circa
Oil on canvas.
35.63 x 53.74 in.
Artwork in beautiful carved gilt-wood frame, restored and re-lined. The canvas, coming from a prestigious Roman private collection, seems to be a forerunner of the canvas already documented in the Mallandrino Collection (Messina) by Anna Chiara Fontana and dated around 1560. The two canvases depicting the same subject narrated in Ovid's Metamorphosis (X, 708-739), or the touching moment in which Venus discovers the lifeless body of the beloved Adonis killed by an angry boar, are divergent for some settings of the compositional system and the colors used. The canvas presented here is preceded, or slightly followed, by a well-known etching by Lorenzo Penni, son of the most famous Luca, dated between 1550 and 1559 and reflects the post-Michelangelo mannerist tradition well embodied by the little-known pictorial production of Laureti.