Bol here painted a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The goddess of love, Venus, and young Amor, try to deter Adonis from going on a boar hunt.

Venus fears for his life. Bol – a pupil of Rembrandt – displays a smooth and bright manner of painting very different from his master’s darker, coarser style.

Bol used it to conjure an idealized image of reality.