Peter Ykens, Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Younger and Peter Rysbrack

With Jan Muller Antiquair, Brussels;

From whom acquired by the Baron and Baronne de Giey;

Thence by descent.

The subject of Vertumnus and Pomona is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (XIV, 642). Pomona, the goddess of gardens, whose devotion to nature left no time for love, was courted by Vertumnus, the god of the seasons, in a variety of disguises, including – as here – that of an old woman, in whose guise he finally gained her confidence.

This work is an example of the kind of collaborative painting that became a hallmark of seventeenth-century Flemish art: the figures were painted by Peter Ykens, the fruit by Jan Pauwel Gillemans the Younger – as well as the guinea pigs lower left, which are commonly found in his work – and the architectural setting by Peter Rysbrack.