Otto van VEEN, known as Otto VENIUS (1556 -1629) - Venus and Adonis

Otto van Veen, now known to have been the last master of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), is also renowned for his emblemata and his numerous studies in oil on paper whose technique, attested in Italy, was much rarer north of the Alps. The leaf on display is typical of the way this artist's works are distributed in many museums such as the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Rijksprentenkabinet in Amsterdam, the Royal Library of Belgium, the Cabinet des Estampes in Brussels, the British Museum in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Fritz Lugt Collection, the Louvre Museum, the Albertina in Vienna etc...
These sketches may have been conceived as stand-alone works that can be reused in the creation of larger paintings. They may help to better understand Rubens' taste for this particular technique.
The scene depicts Adonis with his dog standing in front of Venus sitting in a wooded landscape. Pearly pink characters accented with small dark touches characteristic of the artist stand out against the green background.