Vertumnus and Pomona
by GOVAERTS, Abraham, Oil on copper, 38 x 54 cm
The Flemish landscape painter Abraham Govaerts belongs to the generation of painters influenced by Jan Brueghel the Elder, whose pupil or fervent admirer he must have been.
Pomona, the classical goddess of fruit, and Vertumnus, the god of transformation, are the main figures in an episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XIV, 608-697). Vertemnus, disguised as an old woman, tries to seduce Pomona, goddess of the fruit-gardens. The flowers and fruits, in the minute grace of their rendering, are worthy of Jan Brueghel, while Govaerts’s lyricism makes the work all the more powerful.