This canvas by a late 17th-century painter is part of a group of four works, all at the Museo del Prado (P191, P3196, P3197 and P3198), that express the idea of the Elements through motives drawn from classical mythology. Here, the element Earth is represented with total clarity by the goddess Ceres. The summer fruit she carries, especially sheaves of wheat, and the fact that she is suckling a baby—an expression of fecundity—make her immediately recognizable. The lion and tortoise are also attributes of Earth, although they are associated with the Cybele rather than Ceres. In that sense, Ripa’s analogy between the lion and the farmer is well known: the lion erases its footprints with its tail, while the farmer, when sowing, erases his prints as he covers the seeds. The technique and the rather dark canvas are very characteristic of paintings from Madrid and the turgid forms suggest it may have been painted by an artist close to Claudio Coello.

This important series has never received critical attention, yet it is especially interesting as an example of the artistic situation in circles close to the Madrid court during the final years of the 17th century. They reflect much of Carreño’s approach through Claudio Coello and Ruiz de la Iglesia, with clear but already distant echoes of Venetian and Flemish painting, and even knowledge of Luca Giordano, whose works are known to have been at the Madrid court since at least the late sixteen-fifties. These four works cannot be confidently attributed to any known artist and there are even some differences among them. The Air is attributed to Giordano, while the other three are always listed as anonymous, without mention of their school or possible circle (Text drawn from Pérez Sánchez, A. E.: Carreño, Rizi, Herrera y la pintura madrileña de su tiempo (1650-1700), Museo del Prado, 1986, p. 350).

Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E., Carreño, Rizi, Herrera y la pintura madrileña de su tiempo, Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura. Banco Herrero, 1986, p.349-350