The Three Graces

The Three Graces in the Galleria Palatina — not the famous Prado version (c. 1635) but an earlier treatment (c. 1620) — depicts the classical trio of goddesses who personified beauty, charm, and joy in antiquity, their interlinked forms constituting one of the most venerable compositional types in Western art. The Three Graces subject had a history stretching from Greek sculpture through Raphael's Three Graces in the Condé Museum, and each treatment represented its era's ideal of female beauty: what changed across the centuries was less the composition than the proportion and character of the female bodies portrayed. Rubens's Graces are unmistakably Flemish in their physical amplitude — full-bodied, warm, abundantly present — rejecting the slender proportions of Italian Mannerist idealization in favour of a more robust ideal that shocked some contemporaries but has been consistently celebrated as an expression of life's generosity. The Palatina's version in Florence's Palazzo Pitti provides an important counterpart to the better-known Prado version in the context of an Italian royal collection that was deeply committed to Flemish painting.

The three interlocked figures create a flowing circular composition of extraordinary grace and harmony. Rubens' luminous flesh painting, with its subtle variations of pink, pearl, and gold, represents the culmination of his lifetime study of the female nude.

One of Rubens's most celebrated paintings, housed in the Prado. This late work from around 1635 was painted for the artist's own pleasure and kept in his home until his death. The painting has been carefully conserved by the Prado, with the luminous flesh tones and delicate glazes well-preserved.