Landscape
with the Story of Venus and Adonis
by Hans Bol
1589
bodycolor heightened with gold on parchment
21 x 26 cm (enlarged reproduction)
Hans
Bol painted this unusual miniature in two parts: the central landscape, painted
on parchment mounted on wood, and the framing design, painted directly on wood.
Both parts tell the story of the beautiful youth
Adonis from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
In the main panel, Venus and Adonis embrace before he leaves on the hunt shown
in the distance, in which he is killed by a boar.
Clockwise from left, the frame’s ovals show subsidiary
incidents: Adonis’s mother Myrrha commits incest with her father; turned into
the myrrh tree as punishment, Myrrha bears their son, Adonis; Venus is struck
with love for Adonis; blood springing from the dead Adonis turns into the anemone
flower.
In the frame, Bol combined the cartouches and trophies
of a three-dimensional picture frame with illusionistic borders reminiscent of
manuscript illumination. His materials — opaque color and gold paint on parchment
— also follow the tradition of manuscript illumination.