This painting can be dated to Le Brun’s Roman period. In the lower corners, putti (cherub) play with the arms of the god Vulcan forged for Aeneas at Venus’ behest (Virgil, Aeneid). At the left, the river god who has cleansed away Aeneas’ mortality looks on, and two nymphs peer out from the forest glade in the background. She holds the divine food, ambrosia and nectar she will apply to Aeneas’ lips so that he may join the pantheon of gods. In this painting by Le Brun, the Roman goddess of love Venus is seen anointing her kneeling son Aeneas before he fights Turnus for the possession of Rome. The depiction of the Seasons surrounding the central allegory would have complemented the motif of cyclical change.” - National Gallery of Art That painting, the octagonal Allegory of the Dreams of Men (Detroit Institute of Arts), has a complicated network of symbols that, when considered together, comment upon the interaction of human dreams and desires, fortune, and the great cycles governing heaven and earth. Tintoretto’s Seasons were created to surround a central ceiling painting in the Casa Barbo a San Pantaleone, in Venice. All three of the surviving Seasons feature powerful figures combined with a decorative elegance that is especially prominent in Summer, in the undulating line of stalks of grain silhouetted against the sky, the lacy grape leaves and clustered grapes, and the exquisitely rendered birds. Spring and Autumn are housed in other collections there is no trace of Winter. The work is one of three known paintings from a cycle by Jacopo Tintoretto depicting the personifications of the four Seasons. “Summer is represented here as Ceres, goddess of agriculture, reclining in front of her attribute, a row of wheat stalks. Tintoretto, c1546/1548, National Gallery of Art
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