0912NOTPomona

0912NOTPomona_Rubens

S.Schama: "Painted early in his new marriage, [this picture] shows the artist blissfully reinvigorated, leading Helena toward a garden pavilion. ...At first the painting seems merely an affectionate visual anecdote — the Rubens family out for a walk. But it is as much a record of the fertility of Rubens' mind, at once amorous and encyclopedic, a it is a depiction of his back yard. The picture is thick with visual love letters done in the botanical manner. ...Rubens' contemporaries would have recognized the old woman apparently pottering about the garden as Vertumus, the god of orchards and wine, in disguise in order to seduce Pomona, the guardian nymph of fruit and flowers. And Helena, dressed in a rustic bodice and a straw hat decorated with blooms, is herself a latter-day Pomona, which in turn reveals her husband as the artful Vertumnus, now unconcealed, and about to show her the many and delightful ways in which a vine might wrap itself about a sturdy elm."