Flora (c.1654)

Rembrandt (1606-1669)

Flora
c.1654
Oil on canvas, 100 x 91.8 cm
Metropolitan Museum of ArtNew York

Unlike many of his ambitious contemporaries, Rembrandt never traveled to Italy. Nonetheless, Italian art had a profound effect on him; in this depiction of the Roman goddess of spring, he responded to the sixteenth-century Venetian master Titian in particular. Still, the somber coloration and rough paint handling make this work unmistakably Rembrandt’s own, and the goddess may be based in part on a portrait of the artist’s deceased wife, Saskia, who had been the muse and inspiration for many of his paintings. (MET)

See also:

• Uylenburgh, Saskia van (1612-1642)