Artwork Page for Birth of Adonis

Details / Information for Birth of Adonis

Series Title: The Metamorphoses

Birth of Adonis

c. 1515–20

Benedetto Montagna

(Italian, c. 1481–1555/58)
Culture
Italy, 16th century
Medium
engraving
Measurements
Sheet: 16.3 x 10.8 cm (6 7/16 x 4 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
John L. Severance Fund 1954.566
Catalogue raisonné
Hind V.187.46 ; Bartsch XIII.343.20 ; Ottley II.525
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print

Description

With tiny hands outstretched, the infant Adonis emerges from a prominent tree. Benedetto Montagna depicts the babe as if miraculously extracted from the bark in the manner of Eve’s creation from Adam’s side. But close attention to the sinuous trunk reveals Adonis to be actually born of a wooden womb. His mother Myrrah, after conceiving incestuously, pleaded that the gods deny her both life and death for her crime: she was thus transformed into a tree. Often moralized for later Christian audiences, tales such as this from Ovid’s popular Metamorphoses warned the viewer against following taboo desires.
A vertically oriented print depicts two people wearing loose drapery with covered heads standing next to a tree, one person reaching out to meet hands with a baby emerging from an eye-level knot in the tree. The other person looks back to a third person on the left, holding a bowl. In the background extends water, with buildings on a cliff jutting into it from the left. In the left corner the words: "BENEDETO MONTAGNA"

Birth of Adonis

c. 1515–20

Benedetto Montagna

(Italian, c. 1481–1555/58)
Italy, 16th century

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