Venus Wounded by a Rose's Thorn
Medium
engraving
Dimensions
26.1 × 16.8 cm
Classification
Department
Prints
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Dudley P. Allen Fund
Accession Number
1930.581
Tags
male
About this artwork
This composition alludes to The Lament for Adonis by the Greek poet Bion (active about 100 BCE). In the poem, Venus, distraught by the death of her lover Adonis, wanders barefoot in the woods and is wounded by brambles. Although Bion implores Venus to “weep no longer in the thickets,” the poem does not describe the moment depicted here when she plucks a thorn from her foot, imaginatively conceived as a vehicle to present a classical female nude. The wide-eyed hare near Venus is an ancient symbol...