Death of Adonis
Venus mourning the dead Adonis — set, oddly, against a clear evening view of the Piazzetta and Doge's Palace of Venice.
Piazzetta San Marco / the Molo, Venice
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
Death of Adonis — at a glance
- Artist
- Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485–1547)
- Year
- c. 1512
- Movement
- Venetian Renaissance
- Place
- A mythological scene with the Piazzetta San Marco, Venice, in the background
- Viewpoint
- A real, matchable view of the Molo, columns, Doge's Palace and Campanile behind the fable
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 189 × 285 cm
- Now at
- Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Overview
The Death of Adonis is a large mythological picture by the Venetian painter Sebastiano del Piombo, made about 1512, shortly before he moved to Rome. Venus sits at the centre, nude, in grief; the beautiful youth Adonis lies dead at the left, killed by a boar; Cupid and nymphs are around them. Behind, across a lagoon, is an unmistakable view of the Piazzetta San Marco, with the Doge's Palace, the Campanile and the two columns, under a still evening sky. It is oil on canvas, about 189 by 285 cm, and it hangs in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Where was Death of Adonis painted?
Scholarship The far bank of the mythological scene is a real, carefully painted view of Venice: the Molo, the two granite columns of the Piazzetta, the Doge's Palace and the Campanile, seen from across the water as from San Giorgio or the Giudecca. Those buildings are unchanged and the view can be matched today. Sebastiano fuses the classical fable with a portrait of his own city — the mourning of Adonis happening, in effect, off the Piazzetta.
How we know
- A mythological foreground, but behind it a real, still-matchable evening view of the Piazzetta — the two columns, the Doge's Palace and the Campanile shown without its post-1514 spire, i.e. painted from topographical knowledge c. 1512 (Uffizi; Hirst). Same treatment as Poussin's 'Landscape with Orpheus and Eurydice'. Relabelled from the arbitrary 'St Mark's Clocktower' subject.
What is in the painting?
A dark grove at the left, where Adonis lies pale on the ground; Venus sits at the centre on a bank, one leg drawn up, turning in sorrow; a winged Cupid and two or three nymphs attend. The middle ground is calm water with a boat; the far side is the sunlit-then-shadowed Venetian waterfront and the Campanile against a soft sky. Warm flesh and drapery against cool blue-grey water and architecture.
Look closely
The Piazzetta columns
The two granite columns on the Molo are clearly painted across the water behind the figures.
The Doge's Palace and Campanile
The Gothic palace and the bell tower stand recognisably on the far bank at dusk.
Venus's turning pose
She sits on a bank, one leg drawn up, twisting in grief towards the dead Adonis.
The Giorgionesque penumbra
The mourning group sits in a soft, shadowy grove, in the mood of Giorgione and the young Titian.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A friezelike mourning group in a shadowy foreground, opening across still water to the lit Venetian skyline.
Scholarship Sebastiano sets the grieving figures in a Giorgionesque penumbra and balances them against the clear, luminous city view behind, so classical myth and contemporary Venice share one evening light. The handling of the landscape and the mood owes much to Giorgione and the young Titian.
Meaning and interpretation
Interpretations differ. What the artist documented, what museums and scholars propose, and later or speculative theories are marked and kept separate.
Myth grounded in Venice
Placing the death of Adonis before the Piazzetta has been read as flattering Venice — associating the city with the world of the gods and with beauty and loss — and simply as a Venetian painter's instinct to set even a fable by his own lagoon.
History & provenance
The painting entered the Medici collections and is in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; it was damaged in the 1993 Via dei Georgofili bombing near the gallery and has been restored.
Sources
- Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence — collection entry for Sebastiano del Piombo, ‘Morte di Adone’ (c. 1512)
- Michael Hirst, ‘Sebastiano del Piombo’ (1981)
Related paintings
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