High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Venus and Adonis is a painting by the Italian late Renaissance artist Titian, executed in Venice around 1553. While the painting, which is now in Madrid`s Museo del Prado, is one of a number of versions of the same subject by Titian, it stands out as a particularly important commission, being intended for King Philip II of Spain. It was part of a series of mythological paintings called "poesie" ("poems").