Вертумн и Помона

In the 1620s Van Dyck was a young Flemish painter making a very good living in Genoa, where the rich merchant families wanted portraits and mythologies from the best hands in Europe. The story here comes from Ovid. Pomona is a nymph who cares only for her orchard and wants nothing to do with suitors, so the god Vertumnus, who can change his shape, disguises himself as an old woman to get close and talk his way in. Van Dyck shows that quiet moment of persuasion. While he was in Italy he studied Titian closely, and he copied a Titian he saw in a Genoese collection into his notebook, which fed straight into the warm, fleshy handling of these two figures.