Venus weerhoudt Adonis van de jacht 1662 - 1726

This monochrome artwork depicts Venus Weerhoudt Adonis van de jacht, a scene from classical mythology, and was made by an anonymous artist. Its themes of love, beauty, and the dangers of the hunt are typical of art made to appeal to a cultured and educated elite. This print presents us with a classical subject that would have been very familiar to the courtly society of the time. In it, the goddess Venus restrains her lover Adonis from going on a hunt. The dogs and Cupid figures act as visual cues, alerting the viewer to the themes of hunting and love that are at play in this scene. While the artist is unknown, the image is likely to have been made in the Netherlands, a region where printed images were extremely popular, around the seventeenth or eighteenth century. To better understand the work’s function, one could investigate the printmaking industry in the Netherlands at the time, and examine the taste and social values of those who bought and collected prints such as this one.