Collection Online as of January 27, 2023
Venus Wounded by a Rose's Thorn
Marco Dente
(Italian, c. 1486–1527)
after Raphael
(Italian, 1483–1520)
published by
Antonio Salamanca
(c.1500–1562)
Engraving
Support: Cream(3) laid paper
Sheet: 26.1 x 16.8 cm (10 1/4 x 6 5/8 in.)
Dudley P. Allen Fund 1930.581
Catalogue raisonné: Bartsch XIV.241.321 (as Marc. Raimondi, XIV.241) Le B.II.111.18; Ottley II.261
State: II/III
Location
not on view
Description
This composition alludes to The Lament for Adonis by the Greek poet Bion (active about 100 BC). In the poem, Venus, distraught by the death of her lover Adonis, wanders barefoot in the woods and is wounded by brambles. Although Bion implores Venus to “weep no longer in the thickets,” the poem does not describe the moment depicted here when she plucks a thorn from her foot, imaginatively conceived as a vehicle to present a classical female nude. The wide-eyed hare near Venus is an ancient symbol of fertility and sexual desire.
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio (Urbino, April 6, 1483-Rome, April 6, 1520), commonly known as Raphael, was one of the most admired Italian painters and architects on the High Renaissance. He was trained in his native city Urbino, a center of art and culture during the rule of the Duke Federico da Montefeltro. Around 1495, Raphael moved to Perugia and joined the master Pietro Perugino's workshop. He later sojourned to Siena, and then resided in Florence by the autumn of 1504. There, Raphael studied the works by Renaissance masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Fra Bartolomeo, and Masaccio. Raphael is best known for his paintings of Madonnas (from 1504 through 1507), and the frescoes that Pope Julio II commissioned to him in the Vatican Palace in Rome in 1514. The same year architect Donato Bramante died, and the pope appointed Raphael chief architect. Raphael's style was based on clarity of forms and harmonious compositions; after his death, his works were highly admired by both Mannerist and Baroque artists.