Allegory of Earth

Francesco Albani's four elements were finished by 1628, yet they reached Turin only in 1633. Those were hard years in northern Italy. From 1628 the war over the succession to Mantua drew in France, Spain and Savoy, Duke Charles Emmanuel I died in 1630 in the middle of it, and that same year plague swept through Piedmont and Lombardy.

The picture shows none of it. Earth belongs to Berecynthia, the ancient mother goddess, crowned and holding a globe, who rides in a chariot drawn by lions. Flora, Ceres and Bacchus, the gods of flowers, grain and wine, keep her company, and all around them cupids are busy with the work of the fields.