Venere e Adone di Tiziano

The Prado Venus and Adonis, executed for Philip of Spain in 1554, is one of Titian’s most celebrated mythological paintings, and a number of variants of it are known. The present study, which is the first of a new series promoted by the Fondazione Centro Studi Tiziano e Cadore, departs with the analysis of the very first two variants of the composition (both lost), and examines for the first time in a comprehensive manner the entire series, putting its development in context. Through a dynamic and interdisciplinary method of investigation, the book investigates also the social and cultural reasons which were at the base of the success of Titian’s composition. By comparing the titianesque Venus and Adonis with works by Paolo Veronese, Carracci, Rubens, Van Dyck, Poussin, and even Lemoyne and Picabia, the book shows how the Venus and Adonis became an iconographic and typological model for both artists and patrons, and should therefore be considered one of the most important and meaningful images of European visual culture. 

THOMAS DALLA COSTA is the Harry M. Weinrebe Curatorial Fellow at The National Gallery, London, and in this capacity he was the assistant curator to the exhibition Titian. Love, Desire, Death (March 2020-January 2021). He has published a number of articles on Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese’s workshop. He has a strong interest in the artists’ creative process, and the pivotal role of drawings to Venetian Renaissance workshops. He has also contributed to several international exhibition, and in 2017 he curated, together with Viktoria Markova, the show Rinascimento. Tiziano, Tintoretto, Veronese (Pushkin State Museum of Art, Moscow).