All About The Three Graces by Raphael

Title of Artwork “The Three Graces”

Artwork by Raphael

Year Created 1504-1505

Summary of The Three Graces

The Three Graces is an oil painting by Italian painter Raphael that is located in Chantilly, France’s Musée Condé. The exact year of creation is unknown, although it appears to have been painted shortly after his arrival to study under Pietro Perugino in about 1500, probably in the years 1503-1505. The picture is the first time Raphael showed the naked female figure in front and rear views, according to James Patrick in Renaissance and Reformation, published in 2007.

Three of the Graces from Greek mythology are seen in this picture. Raphael’s painting was allegedly inspired by a ruined Roman marble statue on display in the Piccolomini Library of the Siena Cathedral—a 19th-century art historian [Dan K] claimed that it was a poor copy of the original—but other sources of inspiration are possible, given that the subject was a popular one in Italy. In her book Early Work of Raphael (2006), Julia Cartwright claims that the painting has considerably more influence from the Ferrara style than classical sculpture, indicating that the statue was not Raphael’s model.

All About The Three Graces

The three ladies in the picture might symbolise different stages in a woman’s growth, with the girded figure on the left symbolising a maiden (Chastitas) and the lady on the right indicating maturity (Voluptas), but alternative theories have been proposed.

Professor Erwin Panofsky argued in 1930 that this picture was part of a diptych with Vision of a Knight, and that it depicted the Hesperides with the golden apples that Hercules stole, based on the storey of Vision. Panofsky’s opinion is not shared by many art historians. The scale disparities between the figures in the paintings, according to Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny’s 1987 biography Raphael, make it doubtful that they were meant as a diptych, albeit “one might have formed the lid of the other.”

While “there can be no doubt that they form a pair,” Michael Wayne Cole writes in 16th Century Italian Art (2006) that “they must not be imagined as a diptych, which is excluded by their square shape and also by the change in scale of the figures.” The figures are depicted as Venus’ handmaidens, carrying the golden apples with which she is linked, and confirming the correct relationship between “Virtus” (represented by Vision) and Amor.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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