Guillaume Courtois, called Il Borgognone (1628-1679)

Guillaume COURTOIS, called IL BORGOGNONE
(Saint-Hippolyte, 1628 - Rome, 1679)
Venus, Mars and Adonis
Oil on canvas - 69 x 77 cm - 88 x 93,5 cm with the frame

Provenance:
New York, Sotheby's, 7 April 1989, no. 89
Milan, Finarte, 25 novembre 1998, no. 50

Bibliography:
V. Di Giuseppe Di Paolo, “Guillaume Courtois nel cantiere di Nettuno e lo stile del Sesto Decennio”, In Storia dell'Arte, no. 137/138, Rome 2014, pp. 110-117 (repr. fig. 7)


This seductive painting depicts the very last moments of Adonis: Mars, drunk with rage and jealousy, is about to slaughter the sleeping ephebe, while Venus tries in vain to stop him. This episode is recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses. When the god of war learns of the love between his official lover and Adonis, he goes into a mad fury and transforms himself into a boar to kill his young rival who has gone hunting. Let's note a certain liberty taken by the painter with regard to the myth; here, there is no question of metamorphosis: Mars is about to run Adonis through with his sword.

Guillaume Courtois borrows the group of Venus and Mars from a fresco by Giulio Romano (c. 1492-1546) in the Palazzo Te (see picture), which he reinterprets within a vast landscape context, heavily influenced by his years of collaboration with Pier Francesco Mola (1612-1666) and Gaspard Dughet (1625-1675). The figure of Adonis, on the other hand, is an invention of Il Borgognone, for which a preparatory study is preserved in the Fine Arts and Archaeology Museum of Besançon (see picture).

It is worth noting that the final figure features a variation in the position of the left arm compared to the preparatory drawing; the artist ultimately favoured a pose similar to that of the Barberini Faun, which had been discovered not long before.

Guillaume Courtois appropriates these cross influences (antiquity and mannerism), reworking them in light of the innovations of his time, and delivers a highly contrasted work, balancing violence and tenderness. On one hand, the group of Venus and Mars conveys all the drama of the scene: the tumult of their struggle is rendered through the turbulent draperies and plume as well as the tense contortion of the god's figure. On the other hand, the relatively small characters are depicted in an Arcadian nature that exudes great serenity. In this setting, the figure of Adonis serves as a perfect foil to the first group: in a languid pose, with his bare shoulder and a puppy nestled against him, he ignores his dog’s warning and sleeps peacefully.

Professor Valeria Di Giuseppe Di Paolo situates our painting in the 1650s a period during which Guillaume Courtois was engaged in painting mythological subjects for his first patron, Camillo Pamphili, the famous nephew of Pope Innocent X, both in his Roman palace in Piazza Navona and in his residence in Valmontone.