Getty Museum
Vertumnus and Pomona
Creator
Cesar van EverdingenDutch Artist · 1617–1678
All works by this person →Cesar van Everdingen hailed from a distinguished family of artists that included his younger brother Allart van Everdingen, a noted draftsman and engraver. Although Cesar spent most of his life in his native Alkmaar, The Netherlands, scholars associate him with the Haarlem school of painting. The Haarlem school painters created idealized, classicizing history paintings and genre in the mid-1600s.
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1650
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Culture
- Dutch
- Department
- Paintings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Kneeling, a young woman turns away from the viewer to listen to an old woman whose open mouth and gesticulating hand indicate that she is in the midst of speech. The young woman wears a skirt and a sheer piece of cloth across her chest. With her face lost in profile, her naked neck, arms, and voluptuous breasts are displayed for the delectation of the male spectator. She holds a cluster of fruit in her right hand and a pruning knife in the other. The subject of this painting comes from Ovid's *Metamorphoses.* The Roman God Vertumnus, disguised as the talkative old woman, attempts to seduce the reclusive woodland nymph Pomona. Netherlandish painters favored this classical story in the 1600s because of its moralizing lessons on the dangers of gullibility.
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