Landscape with the Story of Venus and Adonis

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adonis, afrodita, aphrodite, art, mythology, painting, venus

Hans Bol, 1859 – Landscape with the Story of Venus and Adonis

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.

http://www.getty.edu

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The Pearls of Aphrodite

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aphrodite, mythology, painting, venus

Herbert James Draper

The Pearls of Aphrodite

1907

Aphrodite Urania

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aphrodite, arts, painting, urania

Aphrodite Urania  (as patroness of the arts)

Ceiling painting above the grand staircase at Augusteum (Oldenburg)

Aphrodite Urania was an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, signifying “heavenly” or “spiritual”, to distinguish her from her more earthly aspect of Aphrodite Pandemos, “Aphrodite for all the people”. The two were used (mostly in literature) to differentiate the more “celestial” love of body and soul from purely physical lust. Plato represented her as a daughter of the Greek god Uranus, conceived and born without a mother.

http://www.maicar.com

Pisces in greek mythology

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aphrodite, eros, greek mythology, pisces

According to one Greek myth, Pisces represents the fish into which Aphrodite  and her son Eros  transformed in order to escape the monster Typhon.

Typhon, the “father of all monsters” had been sent by Gaia to attack the gods, which led Pan to warn the others before himself changing into a goat-fish and jumping into the Euphrates.

A similar myth, one which the fish “Pisces” carry Aphrodite and her son out of danger, is resounded in Manilius’ five volume poetic work Astronomica: “Venus ow’d her safety to their Shape.”

Another myth is that an egg fell into the Euphrates river. It was then rolled to the shore by fish. Doves sat on the egg until it hatched, out from which came Aphrodite. As a sign of gratitude towards the fish, Aphrodite put the fish into the night sky.

Because of these myths, the Pisces constellation was also known as “Venus et Cupido,” “Venus Syria cum Cupidine,” Venus cum Adone,” “Dione,” and “Veneris Mater”.