Death of Adonis

The painter Gaulli was born in Genoa, but left for Rome at a young age and worked there for the rest of his life, where he was influenced by the sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini and the painter Pietro da Cortona. He is one of the major artists of the Roman Baroque, and worked in predominantly warm, bright colors. His fresco of the Triumph of the Name of Jesus (1678-79), for the ceiling of the Jesuit church of Il Gesù, is a magisterial work of movement, light, and tumbling figures.

The AMAM painting is a tour-de-force of composition, draftsmanship, and coloration. Adonis, warned by his lover Venus of the dangers of the hunt, has just been gored by the boar, seen over his shoulder. Bright red blood drips onto the ground from his wound, where an anemone springs up in the same hue; his arrows are unused over his shoulder, and his spear lies at his feet. The central putto points toward Adonis with anguished tears, while the one hovering above wipes his eye. In the background, other putti draw their bows to shoot the boar as dogs hold him at bay. Most dramatically, Venus has just arrived, in the very act of jumping from her chariot to the ground (her accompanying doves are all aflutter), in a marvelously twisting pose inspired by the sculptures of Gianlorenzo Bernini. With concern she hovers over her lover, arm outstretched, realizing already from his pallor-the blood has drained completely from his face and gray lips- that all hope is lost.

Apart from its importance as a major late seventeenth-century Italian work, the painting was also one of the primary impetuses for an exhibition entirely dedicated to Gaulli organized by former AMAM director John Spencer at the museum in 1966-not only the first exhibition ever devoted to the artist, but, with the exception of Caravaggio, the first international loan exhibition outside Italy ever devoted to a seventeenth-century Italian artist.

Richard Spear has convincingly argued that Venus Dissuading Adonis from the Chase (now at Burghley House in England) is the pendant to this work.