Artist: Pieter Schenck I (1660-1718/19) after Simon Vouet (1590-1649)
Title: Venus and Adonis
Date: about 1700
School: Dutch, Dutch 17th-century
Medium: mezzotint
Dimensions: 332 x 245mm (plate)
Watermark: partial Strasbourg lily (see image below)
Inscriptions/marks: artist’s interlaced initials in the plate bottom right border <<PS>>; on the image in ink lower right <<fecit?>>; inscription in pencil on verso <<Paul van Sommer>>
Condition: fine condition, rich velvety mezzotint, on laid paper with watermark, trimmed to the platemark
Description: Venus seated on the right stretching out to embrace Adonis who is standing and moving away to the left. A winged putto on the left embraces one of Adonis’ hounds, another hound looks intently towards its master. Set in a wooded landscape. Based on a painting formerly attributed to Vouet and now ascribed to the workshop of Vouet in the Hermitage Museum. (see image below)
Reference: Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, circa. 1450-1700, v. 15, cat. no. 318. Click here to see an impression in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Provenance: Nardecchia, Rome
