The theme of adonis, apart from alluding to the cycle of nature, is a pretext to represent masculine beauty par excellence, more beautiful than himself, according to ovid. In this work the painter strives to interpret a plot from the traditional academic repertoire with characters of modern realism, since adonis, a hero of greek mythology, raised between the goddesses persephone and aphrodite, and her lover, was destroyed by a wild boar, a moment here represented with the dying body of adonis, foreshortened, lying next to his dog, on the left, on the grass. In the second place, the fallen trunk of a tree. Ovid narrates the theme in the metamorphoses (book instantly, the ferocious boar, with its curved snout, makes the spear dyed in blood fall, and, while adonis trembles and seeks shelter, it pursues him and sinks all its teeth into his groin, collapsing him dying on the blonde sand. This is the painting corresponding to his first regulatory shipment as a pensioner in rome, which he took care of during the year 1889. It was already finished on january 15, 1890 and deserved the honorary qualification when it was judged by the academics of san fernando in june of that year. The foreshortened figure, although it has multiple references in both western painting and sculpture since the renaissance, is particularly similar to that of marsyas in jusepe de ribera's painting apollo and marsyas (naples, san martino museum). Of course, due to certain errors in the anatomical representation, it seems more dependent on another representation than on a natural study. In any case, it barely escapes the obligations of the regulation, which resolves with discretion as far as the figure is concerned. The whole of the painting, however, is of great interest, especially due to the treatment of nature, which has the freshness and vividness of what was captured directly, with loose touches of color that without losing realistic fidelity have great spontaneity (text extracted from rome and the academic ideal: painting in the spanish academy of rome 1873-1903, community of madrid, 1992, p. 138). Object Type: painting. Genre: mythological painting. Date: 1889. Dimensions: height: 139 cm (54.7 in); width: 326 cm (10.6 ft). Medium: oil on canvas. Collection: Museo del Prado. La muerte de Adonis, por Eugenio Álvarez Dumont
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