03 — ARTWORK
Venus and Adonis
SPRANGER, Bartholomaeus · 1597 →
- MEDIUM
- Oil on canvas, 163 x 104,3 cm
- TYPE
- Mythological
PALETTE
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- FILE
- 720 × 1180 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
At the end of the 16th century the court of Emperor Rudolph II in Prague was one of the most important art and cultural centre of Europe. The Emperor gathered together important artists: painters, sculptors, goldsmiths, who developed a characteristic style as important as that of the Fontainebleau school flowered at the same period in France. One component of the Rudolphean style was the painting of the Flemish Spranger, another the German Hans von Aachen and the third the Swiss Joseph Heintz.
Spranger was in Paris at the age of nineteen with Primaticcio and Niccolò dell'Abbate. He worked in Parma, where Correggio and Parmigianino influenced him, then he spent eight years in Rome and in 1575 arrived to the court of Maximillian II and became court painter of Rudolph II in 1581.
Venus and Adonis is a late work by Spranger, a masterpieceA term now loosely applied to the finest work by a particular artist or to any work of art of acknowledged greatness or of preeminence in its field. Originally it meant the piece of work by which a craftsman, having finished his training, gained the rank of'master' in his guild. of the Rudolphean MannerismA movement in Italian art from about 1520 to 1600. Developing out of the Renaissance, Mannerism rejected Renaissance balance and harmony in favor of emotional intensity and ambiguity. In Mannerist painting, this was expressed mainly through severe distortions of perspective and scale; complex and crowded compositions; strong, sometimes harsh or discordant colors; and elongated figures in exaggerated poses. In architecture, there was a playful exaggeration of Renaissance forms (largely in scale and proportion) and the greater use of bizarre decoration. Mannerism gave way to the Baroque. Leading Mannerists include Pontormo, Bronzino, Parmigianino, El Greco and Tintoretto..
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rf686ea9621d07b,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Venus and Adonis by SPRANGER, Bartholomaeus},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-08},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/spranger-bartholomaeus-rdacb7fbe8f87a4/venus-and-adonis-rf686ea9621d07b},
urldate = {2026-09-08},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-08. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
