Three Nymphs with a Cornucopia
1615 - 1617. Oil on canvas.Not on display
On Rubens’s death in May 1640, the largest collection of his works aside from his own (he was an important art collector and also retained many of his own creations) was that of King Philip IV of Spain. Philip’s attention had primarily been drawn to Rubens by his aunt, Isabel Clara Eugenia. It should be borne in mind that when the young king embarked on his reign in 1621, only a few works by the artist were to be found in Spain. From that moment on and thanks to the agency of the infanta, Rubens gradually became the king’s most highly prized painter, particularly in the last decade of his life.
The relationship between the infanta and the artist had become closer some years earlier. Around 1620, Isabel Clara Eugenia had requested that in addition to being court painter he should also act as her diplomatic adviser and she entrusted him with negotiations with representatives of the English crown which it was hoped would conclude with the signing of a peace treaty between the two monarchies. This dual relationship between Rubens and the archduchess – as a painter executing increasingly important commissions and as a 156 diplomatic representative – would have an important influence on Philip IV.
Rubens went to Spain in 1628 sent by the infanta, who considered that her nephew should be directly informed of the state of the negotiations with England. We know that the artist arrived in Madrid with eight paintings paid for by Isabel Clara Eugenia, and it is logical to think that with her close ties to the artist she was encouraging the king to focus his attention on him. One of those works was this canvas of Three Nymphs with a Cornucopia.
During his time in Madrid Rubens made an enormous impression on Philip IV, becoming his favourite artist. While at court he painted a now lost equestrian portrait of the monarch which was hung in the Alcázar in place of a similar one by the young Velázquez. Between 1630 and 1640 Philip commissioned Rubens to make dozens of paintings to decorate different rooms in the Alcázar. The artist seems to have been experiencing a period of fatigue at this time and he attempted to reduce his workload but with little success with regard to the Spanish monarch. One example of Philip’s passion for his art is to be seen in the background of Las Meninas, in which the paintings on the walls are depictions of works by Rubens commissioned by the king for the Torre de la Parada at El Pardo, just a few kilometres away.
Three Nymphs with a Cornucopia is a quintessentially Rubensian image and an expression of the artist’s vision of life, indebted to the tradition of classical poetry and mythology. Here he speaks to us of concepts such as abundance, joy and fertility, which animate life and are recounted in the ancient myth of Achelous, who lost a horn that some nymphs filled with fruit and flowers (hence the term ‘cornucopia’, from the 157 Latin cornu, horn, and copia, abundance). Rubens accompanies the horn of plenty with another image which he considered to symbolise the beauty and fertility of nature and of the universe that he celebrates in this painting: the beauty of the female body depicted according to the canons of classical sculpture. Rubens became one of the principal transmitters of that classical tradition and its ideas, and it was he and his work that best expressed them at the Spanish court through the paintings that hung on the walls of the royal palaces. Once again we should not forget that the path which led Rubens to become Philip IV’s favourite painter was the one laid for him by Isabel Clara Eugenia.
