Venus, Adonis and Cupid
XVI century. Pencil, Pencil ground, Grey-brown ink on paper.Not on display
This is a variant of the composition of a painting from Cambiaso´s late period, now untraced, formerly in the collection of the Duc d´Orleans, the appearance of which survives in an engraving by G. M. Villain. In both the lost painting and the Prado copy, the legs of the dead Adonis, with sandals laced half way up his shins, are intertwined with those of the grief-stricken Venus.
The motif of the distraught Cupid seated on the group near his bow, with his head cupped in his hands and with Adonis´s lance alongside, is found in a drawing I the Louvre, which the Suidas are inclined to give to Cambiaso himself (inv. no. 9331).
Turner, Nicholas, From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracc: a century of Italian drawings from the Prado, Virginia, Art Services International, 2008, p.271
