Spring Allegory
1819. Oil on canvas.Not on display
The allegories of the different seasons of the year, together with the series on The Hours of the Day for the decoration of the Royal Casino (also known as the Queen´s Casino), form one of the most interesting cycles of this genre in Spanish neoclassical painting. Its most immediate antecedent in Spain are the canvases painted by Mengs for the Queen´s Dressing Room in the Royal Palace in Madrid, though their compositions and iconography are quite different. The canvases painted by Madrazo and Ribera for the Casino reflect the fashion for this type of allegory of time emerging from France at the time of the Revolution, modelled on decorative figures in motion from classical Roman painting and sculpture, especially the reliefs of the Basilica of Porta Maggiore in Rome. These models would inundate Europe with the Empire fashion in paintings and prints of the most diverse types, almost always replicating very similar compositional schemes, to which the models Flaxman are no strangers.
