The Three Graces

By the early 1620s Rubens ran the busiest painting workshop in Europe, out of a grand house in Antwerp, where pupils and specialists turned out pictures faster than any single hand could. This small oak panel came from that operation. The three Graces stand in their old ring, one turned away, a basket of roses beside them. Scholars have long argued over how much of it Rubens himself painted. The design is his, but much of the handling looks like his best assistants working under his eye, and the flowers and strip of landscape were probably added by a member of the Brueghel family, flower-painters nearby. Rubens returned to these three sisters throughout his life. The version most people know, fuller and warmer, with his young second wife among the models, came about a decade later and hangs in Madrid. Here they are slimmer and cooler, still close to the antique statues the subject grew from.