Earthly fruitfulness and the gods of nature in Rubens’ imagery

Abstract

This article explores themes of fertility and fecundity in Peter Paul Rubens’ work and investigates their role in a peculiar Rubensian category of subject, somewhere between landscape and myth, which can perhaps be described as ‘mythological genre’. Here we see the ancient gods of nature inhabiting the countryside and engaged in their ‘everyday’ activities, though, as in The feast of Venus (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum), their presence is usually sensed rather than seen by any human characters depicted alongside them. A particular focus of the article is one of Rubens’ most personal works, the Nymphs and satyrs gathering fruit (Madrid, Museo del Prado). It was his happy invention to give the nymphs, satyrs and even the old Silenus the job of collecting fruit together, to keep the cornucopia – symbol of abundance and fecundity – in a state of constant overflow. It has not been realised, however, that Rubens had a classical source for the idea of Silenus and the satyrs helping the nymphs gather apples: a passage in Propertius’ Elegies (II.32.37-40). The poetry of Propertius was especially familiar to Rubens’ circle as Justus Lipsius planned an edition of the poet’s work. Moreover, the lines had been the subject of a notable emendation by Joseph Justus Scaliger, as well as an extensive discussion by Lipsius in his Antiquae lectiones (III). Rubens was surely familiar with the Propertius passage, whether he came across it in his reading or in his conversations on ancient literature and customs with his brother, Philip, Lipsius’ favourite pupil. In Nymphs and satyrs, the poet’s lines seem to have helped inspire a joyous celebration of the earth’s fruitfulness by the gods of nature themselves.