SOURCE: Belsey, Catherine. “Love as Trompe-l'oeil: Taxonomies of Desire in Venus and Adonis.” In Venus and Adonis: Critical Essays, edited by Philip C. Kolin, pp. 261-85. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997.

In the following essay, originally published in 1995, Belsey observes that Venus and Adonis generates desire and promises to provide a definitive portrayal of love, yet it ultimately fails to deliver.

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The painter Zeuxis excelled in the art of trompe-l'oeil, a mode of painting that is capable of deceiving the eye by its simulation of nature. Zeuxis portrayed grapes with such success that birds flew toward his picture. His younger rival, Parrhasius, however, challenged Zeuxis to a competition to decide which painter's work was more true to life. Parrhasius won—by depicting a curtain so convincing that Zeuxis begged him to draw it and reveal the picture behind.¹ Jacques Lacan, in his seminar “Of the Gaze as...