Venus is trying to stop him from leaving. The goddess of love wraps her arms around the hunter Adonis as he sets out with his dogs, and he turns away with his spear raised. The story comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Venus warns Adonis to avoid dangerous animals, and he ignores her and is killed by a boar. Titian shows the last moment before it.
Titian painted the subject in the 1550s for Prince Philip of Spain, later King Philip II, as one of a group of mythological paintings he called poesie, or visual poems. He made several versions. In a letter to Philip he explained that he had shown Danae from the front and Venus from behind, so that a room hung with both paintings would show the viewer both sides of the figure.
The painting is full of small signs of what will happen. Cupid rests at the left, with a bow and quiver hanging from the tree behind him. The hounds are straining on their leashes. A faint rainbow and a broken sky hang above the trees. Titian's brushwork is loose and warm, building the figures from layers of translucent color.
This version is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The composition was admired and copied by later artists, including Rubens.
Titian's Venus and Adonis appears on our: