Changing Paintings: 50 The making of myrrh and birth of Adonis

Ovid’s sequel to the story of Pygmalion’s marriage to his former statue is a darker tale of incest, transformation, and obstetrics in the arboretum, resulting in myrrh and the unique birth of Adonis.

Pygmalion’s great granddaughter Myrrha was cursed by the Fates and blighted in love. Although she had many suitors, she fell in love with her father, King Cinyras. Ovid relates her long soliloquy in which she wrestles with her own mind over this. When her father asked her what to do about her suitors, she first stayed silent, then burst into tears, eventually confessing that she wanted a husband like her father.

That night she lay awake in bed, her mind in turmoil, until resolving that her only solution was suicide. She tied a noose around a beam in her bedroom, and was just about to hang herself from it when her old nurse came in. Eventually, Myrrha confessed to her shameful desire, and her nurse promised to arrange the matter for her.

When the festival of Ceres came, Cenchreis, Myrrha’s mother, was busy with her duties, allowing the nurse to arrange Myrrha’s liaison with her father. The nurse ensured that Cinyras had plenty to drink, and promised him a night making love to a girl as young as his daughter. Later that night, the nurse took Myrrha to her father, and put her to bed with him, making her pregnant. Myrrha and her father continued to sleep together night after night, Cinyras still oblivious of who his partner really was. Eventually, he brought in a lamp so that he could see her, and was shocked to discover his own daughter.

He drew his sword to kill her, but she fled and wandered in the desert until it was time for her child to be born. Myrrha then called on the gods to help her, but wanted to neither live nor die. She was transformed into a myrrh tree, providing the precious resin myrrh from the sap generated from her tears of grief.

Adonis, the child who had been growing within her, was then delivered by Lucina, goddess of childbirth, and laid on soft leaves by the Naiads to be anointed with his mother’s myrrh.

Artist not known, Birth of Adonis (date not known), fresco from the Golden House of Nero in Rome, dimensions not known, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England. Image by Carole Raddato, via Wikimedia Commons.

This classical fresco from the Golden House of Nero in Rome shows Lucina presenting Venus, who stands clutching the top of a myrrh tree, with the newborn Adonis.

Titian (1490–1576), The Birth of Adonis (c 1505-10), oil on cassone panel, 35 x 162 cm, , Musei civici di Padova, Padua, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

Possibly one of Titian’s earliest works, although this is disputed and even Giorgione has been credited, this cassone panel of The Birth of Adonis probably dates from 1505-10. At the left, Myrrha and her father Cinyras lie together, although this would of course make certain his knowledge of her identity. In the centre, a baby is delivered from the woody womb of Myrrha as a tree, in multiplex narrative.

Bernardino Luini (c 1480/82-1532), The Birth of Adonis (1509-10), fresco transferred to panel, 135 x 235 cm, Villa Rabia “La Pelucca”, Milan, Italy. Wikimedia Commons.

At about the same time, Bernardino Luini painted his fresco account of The Birth of Adonis (1509-10), which also adopts multiplex narrative to explain the origin of Myrrha’s pregnancy. In the foreground, the couple are shown together, and at the top left the miraculous birth has just taken place. In an alternative reading, the couple in the foreground could be Adonis as a young man, with the goddess Venus as his lover.

Luigi Garzi (after) (1638-1721), The Birth of Adonis and Transformation of Myrrha (date not known), oil on panel, dimensions not known, The Wellcome Library, London. Courtesy of Wellcome Library, via Wikimedia Commons.

Over a century later, this wonderful panel was painted, showing The Birth of Adonis and Transformation of Myrrha. This was possibly after Luigi Garzi, although again its origin remains disputed. Reference to Myrrha’s dark past has been concealed, and she is here shown as a chimera between woman and tree, with the infant Adonis just delivered by a whole team of midwives and maids. The helper at the right wears a coronet with the crescent moon on it, signifying the goddess Diana. On the left side of the tree, one of the other helpers is holding up a tray with a small container of myrrh to anoint Adonis. In the foreground, a wingless putto is laying out a napkin for the infant.

One artist painted this story repeatedly: Marcantonio Franceschini, a Baroque painter in the Italian city of Bologna.

Marcantonio Franceschini (1648–1729), The Birth of Adonis (c 1685-90), oil on copper, 48.5 × 69 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

This version of Franceschini’s The Birth of Adonis probably dates from around 1685-90, and is now in Dresden. Myrrha is a distinctive cross between tree and woman, and a couple of satyrs are laughing in the bushes behind her. Two young women are rather pointedly looking in amazement at the origin of Myrrha’s baby. In the centre, Adonis is being given by Diana, with her crescent moon, to Venus, who stars in his later life, and is already admiring his beauty.

Marcantonio Franceschini (1648–1729), The Birth of Adonis (c 1692-1709), oil, dimensions not known, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vienna, Austria. Wikimedia Commons.

Franceschini’s later version from around 1692-1709 is now in Vienna, and arranges a similar composition into vertical format. Here Diana is handing Adonis over to another goddess, possibly Venus, who is preparing to assume the role of wet-nurse. Behind them, the two women looking in amazement appear to be less anatomically engaged, and Pan and a satyr are providing some celebratory music. The napkin-bearing putto is here a winged Cupid.

Apart from a slightly later painting by Boucher, which I have been unable to illustrate here, those seem to have been the last paintings of this disturbing story of the origins of myrrh and Adonis, until recently.

Rafael Metz (dates not known), The Transformation of Myrrh and the Birth of Adonis (2006), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Contemporary artist Rafael Metz’s The Transformation of Myrrh and the Birth of Adonis (2006) shows only the final part of the story, as the infant is being cradled by another woman, under the chimeric tree of Myrrha with its ornate and decorative branches. Myrrh resin is already exuding from the bark.