The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 23, 2025

Vertically oriented print of two people in loose drapery and covered heads standing next to a tree leaning across the print's right side, 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.

Birth of Adonis

c. 1515–20

Benedetto Montagna

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

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.
  • Creation, Birth, and Rebirth. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 17, 2024-July 16, 2025).
    From Block Books to Baskin: Artists as Illustrators. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 13-August 17, 1986).
    Old Master Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 29, 1966-February 28, 1967).
    Art and Humanism in the Renaissance. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 23-February 25, 1962).
  • {{cite web|title=Birth of Adonis|url=false|author=Benedetto Montagna|year=c. 1515–20|access-date=23 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1954.566