Ceres, Bacchus and Venus

Janssens's mythological trio of Ceres, Bacchus, and Venus, dated 1650 (with the same posthumous caveat as the Adoration), depicts the three deities whose domains — grain, wine, and love — were proverbially said to sustain human life. The Latin saying "Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus" (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus grows cold) was well known to educated Baroque audiences and provided the conceptual framework for depicting the three together. The combination allowed painters to celebrate the material pleasures of food and drink alongside the pleasures of love as the necessary conditions for human flourishing — a convivial philosophical message suited to domestic or dining room display. Whether autograph or attributed, the Noordbrabants Museum work participates in a pictorial tradition that Rubens and many other Flemish painters explored throughout the early seventeenth century.

Canvas with three monumental allegorical figures — Ceres with grain and agricultural attributes, Bacchus with vine and vessel, Venus with Cupid — arranged in close, interacting grouping. The warm, abundant palette of grain gold, wine purple, and flesh pink serves the theme's celebration of material pleasure. Still-life elements — fruits, bread, grapes, flowers — surround the figures with tangible abundance. The three figures' physical proximity and intertwined gazes or gestures enact the proverbial interdependence.