Pomona and Vertumnus is regarded as a companion piece to the Offering to Flora (Museo Nacional del Prado). The paintings depict the goddesses of autumn and spring, they are of similar size (although the Prado painting appears to have been cut away at the sides, as indicated by the truncated cornucopia), and their compositions mirror each other in their symmetrical arrangement. On the other hand, they are dated in consecutive years and the treatment given to the mythological subjects differs considerably. It is possible that they hung as a pair in the collection of the Count of Solre, but the documentation is ambiguous in this respect. These are some of the most ambitious works by the artist to have been preserved. The distinctive features of both pictures are the cornucopias of fruits and flowers, for which Van der Hamen took advantage of his experience and fame as a painter of still lifes. The cornucopias are fundamental narrative elements in his treatment of historical subjects, and include the widest variety of fruits, vegetables and flowers ever painted by him, personifying the bounty of nature itself. The Offering to Flora represents nearly seventy varieties of flower. Its botanical diversity formed part of the “cultivated” attraction of such motifs for a select number of viewers, while most others would have been struck primarily by its impact on the senses – principally that of sight, in its visual variety, and that of smell, in its imagined potential. Van der Hamen was probably inspired by the rivalry with northern art in the royal collections. For example, Rubens’s Ceres and Pan, painted in c. 1620 and sent to Madrid in 1623 in a dispatch of Flemish pictures for Queen Isabella of Bourbon, contained a cornucopia of fruits and flowers that was painted by Frans Snyders, a specialist in still lifes. Van der Hamen complained that his figure paintings were less appreciated by the market than his still lifes, and the pair of pictures under discussion here elegantly resolve this dichotomy by demonstrating his skill at both.

The poetic subjects of Pomona and Flora are doubtless the result of Van der Hamen’s immersion in the literary world at court. He is said to have written verses himself on the theme Ut pictura poesis. Ovid (Metamorphoses, 14, 623-697) tells the story of Pomona, a virginal wood nymph and goddess of the poma or fruit of the trees, who devoted herself to her orchards, and Vertumnus, a god of the changing seasons, who unsuccessfully wooed her under several disguises. Finally discarding the last of these, that of an old woman, he returned to his youthful self and seduced her, and she agreed to share her orchards with him in marriage. This story of unrequited love, seduction and final triumph suggests a reading of the picture as an allegory of marriage, a state exemplified by the interdependence of the elm and the vine, visible behind the protagonists, which Vertumnus used to persuade Pomona of his honourable intentions. Here, Vertumnus appears disguised as a gardener and shows decorous moderation in offering Pomona a basket of fruits as a love token, to which she responds with a peach from her cornucopia. The pornographic print drawn by Perino del Vaga, on the other hand, shows Pomona giving one of her apples to the mature and naked Vertumnus. Although Ovid makes his enamoured protagonist say that what he wants is her, not her fruit, this detail probably refers to the eventual surrender of her virginity in marriage. Pomona is an idealised figure of physical perfection. Her features in profile, like those of Vertumnus, are based on engravings by Antonio Tempesta after drawings of fantastic heads by Michelangelo. Pomona’s cold and marble-like flesh and her gown of silvery white silk, which ironically invites touch, are chromatic articulations of chastity and demureness. Hers is a fictitious costume of high breeding, hanging loose – her breasts are outlined by the folds of the fabric – with a notable absence of lace, and showing partial nudity in the bare arms and unshod feet.

Van der Hamen’s Flora is differentiated from Pomona in being a portrait of a real model, which can be understood in terms of the mythological portrait in the European courtly context of the time. The writers of myths identified Flora with a Roman courtesan, Laurentia, whose sanctified cult became that of the goddess of spring. Van der Hamen’s representation of the unknown seated woman may be a pictorial equivalent of the poetic resource of using names all’antica to hide the identifies of the mistresses of great figures. An outstanding example of this is the case of the courtesan Margaret Lemon, the lover and model of Van Dyck, who portrayed her as Flora. The ideals of beauty, love and marriage could help to explain her role. Van der Hamen’s work may even be a nuptial portrait or an epithalamium. Significant in this respect is the age of the model, together with her loose hair – an attribute of a maiden – and the sacred basket of roses for Venus. An almost contemporary pastiche of Van der Hamen’s Flora, which forms a pair with a variant of his Pomona and Vertumnus and belonged to the collection of the Marquis of Leganés, converts the figure into an extravagantly dressed noblewoman who is offered flowers by two classical cupids. In both pictures, Flora’s low neckline, a form of ‘undress’ in the Spanish context, is in keeping with the Flemish and French fashion, a detail that may be of significance as regards the model’s identity. Van der Hamen’s Flora is seated in a modern walled garden with a classical fountain, rich in traditional symbolism as a place associated with sociability, leisure and well-being. The cut of her gown recalls the formal portrait, but is partly fictitious and indicates an indeterminacy between the worlds of reality and myth. This brightly coloured dress is perhaps of the type used in the Roman festival of the Floralia, and the saffron-coloured skirt may evoke the nuptial colours of ancient brides. The changing hues of the silk evoke the varied palette of spring, as well as the image of painting itself. The garland of flowers is the attribute of Flora and also of its inventor Glycera, whose love was celebrated by the ancient painter Pausias in his portrait. As is to be expected of a portrait, Flora looks towards the viewer, probably a man, who is placed in the role of admirer, suitor, husband and painter, and whom she may be thanking for his gift of roses. She seems to dedicate herself to him, with her right hand on her heart, and she points to the fertile “spring” of love in the mass of flowers, immortalised, like her beauty, by the painter’s art.

Peter Cherry

Ceres or Pomona and Vertumnus is a seminal painting within the oeuvre of Juan van der Hamen y León and indeed in the Spanish painting of his time and of this genre as a whole. Even though it was very likely painted earlier, it was devised to be a pair with Offering to Flora (1627, Museo del Prado), a work with a composition that is similar but reversed, which leads to the theory that they were probably meant to be hung together. However, the fact that the canvas in the Prado is dated 1627 and has slightly different proportions (219 x 111 cm) called that hypothesis into question the past, even though it was known that there were series or similar pairs from different dates which had not been conserved in full. In any event, the iconographic similarity between the two has always been clear and has been highlighted by different experts: the theme of Pomona (and that of the goddess Ceres) is a typical representation of Summer, while Flora represents Spring.

In his text for the catalogue of Flores españolas del Siglo de Oro. La pintura de flores en la España del siglo XVII (2002, Museo del Prado), Peter Cherry took as read the common origin of the two works in providing further information on the vicissitudes of the two paintings: ‘This painting [Offering to Flora] is a pair with Pomona and Vertumnus by the same author, signed and dated in 1626 [...] in the Count of Solre’s collection. That Flemish aristocrat was a captain in the Royal Company of Archers, to which the painter also belonged, and he also owned the pair of still-lifes with flowers and dogs […]. When Solre died in1638, those paintings were included in the inventory of the Great Gallery of  Paintings of his palace in Madrid with the short description of two paintings of two goddesses, one of flowers and another of fruit that are more or less three  yardsticks long and more or less two yardsticks less six inches […]. The fact that those paintings, which are among Van der Hamen’s most beautiful paintings of figures, were owned by Solre is proof of the sophisticated taste of this important patron of the artist”.

The Banco de España’s canvas features the most characteristics elements of Juan van der Hamen y León’s style. The general layout, the feminine model and even the technique of the background landscape are clearly Flemish, and owe a great deal to the conventional style of the late 16^th century and to the early works of Rubens seen at court. On the other hand, the effects of the intense light contrasting with very harsh shadows and the resounding treatment of the volume, which stands out lit against a dark background, clearly derives from Caravaggio’s tenebrist naturalism, of which Van der Hamen was one of the main followers in Spain. Given its early date, it is a work of particular importance and is considered one of the earliest and best examples of a type of successful composition which, leaving aside the likelihood of common origin or conception as a pictorial pair, would culminate in the Offering to Flora now held at the Prado.

From an iconographic perspective, Ceres and Pomona are frequently associated as they are both goddesses linked to fertility and the fruit harvest. The fact that an old man appears in the composition however tilts the scales towards the woman, dressed in the style of a noble lady of the Baroque, being Pomona, in line with the myth as told by Ovid. According to that canonical text, the goddess, queen of trees, gardens and vegetable gardens, fled from seduction by men and spent her time looking after her fruit trees. But the god Vertumnus, who was in love with her, disguised himself as a harmless old man to cross her land. This is the moment depicted by Van der Hamen: that moment of trust between the characters, narrated as follows by Ovid in The Metamorphoses: “Scorning love, Pomona had walled off her gardens to keep out men […]. Only Vertumnus, always obliging and humble, managed to win the trust of the goddess and even enter within her walls. Looking at her with rapture, he once said: ‘Oh, Pomona, your work is marvellous! Such admirable lushness and everything is so well tended […] Marry me![...] If you so wish, I will stay young and handsome [...]”. Vertumnus turned into a striking young man and appeared before Pomona with the brilliance of Phoebus emerging from behind a dark cloud”.

• Alfonso Pérez Sánchez
• Carlos Martín