Vertumnus and Pomona

Janssens's Vertumnus and Pomona of 1615, in the Bode Museum Berlin, depicts the Ovidian myth of the Roman god of seasons disguising himself as an old woman to gain access to the orchard goddess Pomona and persuade her to accept his love. The myth — told in Ovid's Metamorphoses — was a favorite of Flemish Baroque painters because it combined disguise narrative (the trickster god in old-woman costume), a garden setting (Pomona's orchard), and a love story with a seasonally symbolic dimension (Vertumnus as the principle of seasonal change wooing the goddess of fruiting). Janssens's version, painted the same year as his Adoration of the Magi, demonstrates the range of his mythological subjects. The Bode Museum context suggests the work entered Berlin collections through the same channels that brought major Flemish works to Prussian royal collections.

Oil paint on canvas with the genre scene of an old woman (Vertumnus disguised) seated beside the young Pomona in an orchard setting. The contrast between the old woman's disguise costume and the youthful beauty of Pomona is the composition's central visual interest, played against the abundant garden background. Fruit on trees and on the ground provides occasion for still-life precision. The disguise moment — Vertumnus not yet revealed — is captured before the mythological transformation, allowing Janssens to maintain the narrative ambiguity.