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Ferdinando Tacca is credited with an extensive series of small bronzes on mythological subjects, including the present Venus and Adonis. In the story from Ovid, the goddess of love tried to protect her beautiful mortal beloved Adonis: the youth was fatally wounded by a wild boar during a hunt. The small bronze depicts the episode - frequent in both Renaissance and Baroque art - in which Venus tries desperately to restrain her love from setting out on the fatal hunt.
The group is notable for the typically graceful figures of Ferdinando Tacca, while the refined, extremely polished working of the surfaces is an excellent example of the technical perfection achieved by bronze casters in the seventeenth century.
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