刻瑞斯

This is not quite a picture in its own right. Painted in grey monochrome, like carved stone, Ceres and a companion panel of Abundance once formed a protective cover for a small painting of the Holy Family that Raphael made around 1516 for the French court. By then Raphael was the busiest artist in Rome, running a large workshop while decorating the Pope's apartments, so hands other than his own almost certainly helped here. Ceres was the Roman goddess of grain and the harvest, and she carries the wheat and fruit that stood for plenty. Grey pictures of this kind, imitating relief sculpture, were prized as a display of pure skill, proof that a painter could conjure solid form with no colour at all.