Venus and Adonis - Andrea Celesti

Attributed to the Venetian artist Andrea Celesti, the Italian painting from the late 17th century featuring the gods was added to the painting collection as a gift from a citizen of Mainz during the post-war period.  As countless times in the art and painting of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the ancient divine sphere is chosen to create a pin-up. The brightly illuminated body of Venus, the goddess of beauty, love, and eroticism, is presented in a wooded landscape, at the very front of the picture.

Small, semi-divine beings, Erotes or Genii, flit around her, support her limbs, and touch her– childishly, of course—without appearing overly erotic. There is also something innocent and pure about Venus' nakedness.

In his Metamorphoses, Ovid describes how Venus, inadvertently struck by an arrow from her son Cupid, falls in love with the beautiful hunter Adonis, recognisable in our picture by his hunting spear. Here we can see the burgeoning erotic relationship, still in the initial stages.