Claude Mellan, printmaker

After about 1630, Claude Mellan began to subtract from, rather than add to, his vocabulary of marks, reducing it almost exclusively to the swelling line, as evident in this engraving of his own invention. Expertly spaced at intervals with varying depths, the swelling line does all the work of creating volume and light without any cross-hatching. The edges of forms are defined by the termination of swelling lines running perpendicular to them. Mellan portrayed the approaching amorini in the background with the simplest pattern of parallel lines, merely suggesting the outlines of the bodies and allowing the viewer to reconcile the shapes.

Classically composed in reference to French painters like Nicolas Poussin, the engraving narrates how Venus, pierced by Cupid’s arrow and besotted with love for Adonis, finds him dead after being gored by a wild boar. The amorini in the background try to hunt down the boar after its fatal blow.