Venus And Adonis – Attributed To Antonio Bellucci (1654 – 1726)

Oil on canvas. Venetian school around 1700, attributed to Antonio Bellucci.
Our painting immerses us in the intimacy of a scene where the lovers of mythology embrace and exchange a look filled with tenderness. Thus we discover Venus and Adonis sitting at the bend of a grove, eluding the sight of men. Adonis, a spear in his hand and the quiver placed behind him, is preparing to go hunting, his dogs impatient to go track the game. The scene is all the more moving as we are probably witnessing the last moments of the couple who embody love and beauty, Adonis will indeed succumb to the charge of a wild boar during this hunting party. It is with all the elegance and grace of the master from Treviso that the scene is painted. We find Antonio Bellucci's propensity, under the influence of the work of Luca Giordano, for dramatic stagings under the effects of strong light contrasts. He places at the top of his composition a winged cupid who, as if to capture the lovers, stretches a net above them. Full of eros and sweetness, the gestures and glances are unmistakable, the scene is the reflection of the passionate love that unites the goddess and the handsome man. Adonis is the fruit of the incestuous loves of the king of Syria Theias and his daughter Myrrha who was transformed into a myrrh tree from which Adonis was born. Venus, touched by the beauty of the baby, took him in and entrusted him to Proserpine (goddess of the underworld, of the Underworld) to raise him. But the latter, in turn in love with the child, did not want to return him to Venus. Jupiter then arbitrated this rivalry and decided that Adonis would live a third of the year with Venus, a third with Proserpina, and the last third wherever he wanted. Adonis chose to spend two thirds of the year with Venus. Later, Diana's anger (for mysterious reasons) set a wild boar against him, which, during a hunt, mortally wounded him. This is the episode that will follow our scene.

Our masterful composition is elegantly set in a blackened wooden casseta frame decorated with gold.
Dimensions: 106 x 96 cm – 127 x 117 cm with the frame
Sold with invoice and certificate of expertise.

Antonio Bellucci (Pieve di Soligo, Treviso 1654 – Id. 1726). After initial training in Dalmatia with a certain Domenico Difnico, he studied painting with Pietro Liberi, Antonio Zanchi and Andrea Celesti, the most prominent artists in Venice in the last decades of the 17th century. Bellucci's artistic career was dazzling: around 1691, he was commissioned to paint the grandiose canvas of the "Doge praying for the end of the plague" for the cathedral of San Pietro di Castello. He then fulfilled commissions in Venice, Verona and Bergamo. Called to Vienna in 1709 by Emperor Joseph I, whose portrait he painted, he then worked for Charles VI and for the Prince of Liechtenstein, who entrusted him with the decoration of his palace. At the request of the Prince-Elector of the Palatinate, John William, he was in Düsseldorf. And from 1716, he spent six years in London, where he created numerous decorations. Antonio Bellucci is Antonio Balestra's teacher and influences the beginnings of Sebastiano Ricci.

Bibliography:
- MAGANI, Fabrizio, Antonio Bellucci, Stefano Patacconi Editore, 1995
- LUCCO, Marco, La pittura nel Veneto, Il Seicento, Electa, 2000.
- MARTINI, Egidio, Pittura Veneta e altra Italiana dal XV al XIX secolo, Stefano Patacconi Editore, 1992
- SAFARIK, Eduard Alexandre, MILANTONI, Gabriello, La pittura del Seicento a Venezia, Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura, 1988
- Collective work, La pittura del Seicento a Venezia (catal. della mostra), Edizioni Alfieri, Venezia 1959