Venus and Adonis

Venus and Adonis are sitting on a bench. With a strong twist their bodies embrace each other. [...] Through glances and gestures they attract the attention of the beholder to what is going on on the bench. Venus and Adonis are slimly built end their movements seem rather stiff.Venus has an alaborate, accurated modeleld coiffure. The sculpture is only partly chiselled, and in several less visible parts the bronze filled air channels are left untouched. The group is not signed. It can, in all probability, be identified [...]in the Christina inventory of 1652, as well as with the "Venus and Adone Bild von Metall" which according to the Prague inventory of 1621, stood on the stairs to the New Hall of the Hradschin in Prague. The rather dry modelling of the slim figures [...] and the elaborate hair-dress indicate a date of the sculpture in the second half of the 16th century and the attribution to an Italian trained Northen Artist. Topic and charachter of the composition are very charachteristic of the art at the court of Rudolph II in Prague. In particular we are reminded of the numerous paintings by Bartholomäus Spranger [...] From 1575 onwards Spranger worked at the court of Emperor Maximilian II in Vienna together with the sculptor Hans Mont. After Maximilian's death in 1576 both artists were taken over by his successor Rudolph II. In 1578 Mont followed the emperor to Prague, where he stayed until the begining of 1580. [...] His name is not mentioned in the inventory of the Kunstkammer of 1607-11. This does not necessarily mean that no works by his hand were kept there, only that no signed works were left [...] Hans Mont had worked with Giovanni Bologna in Florence before he entered the service of Maximilian.[...] No signed or documented sculptures by his hand are known. [...] The provenance of the bronze, its stylistic proximity to Spranger's work of the eighties, are arguements in favour of the attribution to Hans Mont.[...] and if we may assume that the group was cast in Prague it must be dated 1579/80. Its unfinished state is well in accordance with the proposition that Mont left Prague precipitely. [Lars-Olof Larsson, European Bronzes, Stockholm 1992, s. 50]