Adonis

View Fullscreen

Giuseppe Mazzuoli, The Death of Adonis, c. 1680-1709, marble, 193 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Adonis was an incredibly beautiful youth, and was fought over by Aphrodite/Venus and Persephone/Proserpina even as an infant.  Their dispute was so great that Zeus/Jupiter had to intervene, and decreed that the boy would spend half the year with each goddess.

He appears in several types of scenes.  Sometimes he is simply pictured as a beautiful young man, often hunting with dogs and accompanied by Aphrodite/Venus.  His birth is another common scene:  he was born from the bark of a myrrh tree after his mother was transformed into the plant after her husband tried to kill her.  Perhaps most common is his death by a wild boar, when anemones grew from his spilled blood.