Verano, Ceres

For a decade Millet had been the painter of France's rural poor, of women bent double gleaning the last grain from a cut field. So it is a surprise to find him here painting a Roman goddess. Around 1864 a Paris collector named Thomas commissioned him to decorate a townhouse with the Four Seasons, and Millet gave each season a figure from classical myth. Summer became Ceres, the ancient goddess of grain and the harvest, whose name still sits inside the word cereal. She lies among the ripe wheat at the year's fullest moment, when the fields Millet usually showed being worked stand heavy and ready. The set was painted as decoration for a private Paris house, and this panel of Summer is the one that later found its way to the museum in Bordeaux.