Virgo

Virgo — the sixth sign of the zodiac, associated with late summer, harvest, and the goddess Demeter-Ceres — is one of Jordaens's 1640 series of zodiac compositions for the Luxembourg Palace. The celestial maiden and the agricultural abundance associated with the harvest season gave painters rich iconographic material: sheaves of grain, the scythe, and the figure of the idealized maiden. Jordaens's robust, earthly figure style was particularly well suited to agricultural allegory, where physical vitality rather than ethereal refinement was the appropriate visual mode. The Luxembourg Palace's decorative programme placed these zodiac compositions in a French royal context, and Jordaens's participation marked the reach of Antwerp's artistic reputation beyond the Southern Netherlands.

Like other works in the zodiac series, Virgo required a design that read powerfully at decorative scale within an architectural setting. The figure of the celestial maiden is likely rendered with the fullness and physical warmth that characterises all of Jordaens's female figures, the agricultural attributes — grain, sickle — incorporated as natural extensions of her physical world rather than abstract symbols.