The Death of Adonis
by MAZZUOLI, Giuseppe, Marble, height 193 cm
The exceptional beauty of this child, the fruit of an incestuous union engineered by the insulted Aphrodite, caused an argument among the gods that could only end in his death: he was killed by a boar while hunting. In devoting one of his chief works to that fatal incident, Mazzuoli expressed in a typically Baroque depiction of a dramatic moment the idea of the transience of beauty.