When Peter Paul Rubens painted Vertumnus and Pomona in 1636, he was at the height of his fame, working feverishly on a vast commission for the Spanish king, Philip IV. This painting was created as part of a decorative cycle for the Torre de la Parada, a royal hunting lodge near Madrid, where Rubens and his workshop produced dozens of mythological scenes in just a few years. The project was so ambitious that Rubens relied on trusted assistants, including Jacob Jordaens and Jan Brueghel the Younger, to help complete the cycle.

The king’s desire to fill his retreat with stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses speaks to the enduring fascination with ancient myths at the Spanish court. The moment Rubens selects is the cunning climax of Ovid’s tale: Vertumnus, god of seasons and change, finally reveals his true identity to Pomona, the goddess of orchards, after approaching her in disguise. In the painting, Vertumnus, still partly in the guise of an old woman, gestures persuasively toward Pomona, who sits amid a bounty of fruit, her attention caught between suspicion and curiosity. The lush, sunlit abundance of apples and pears at her feet signals her dominion over the orchard, while Vertumnus’s pleading hand and intent gaze capture his longing and determination.

Unlike Francesco Melzi’s more restrained Vertumnus and Pomona, Rubens fills his canvas with sensual energy and movement, using rippling fabrics and expressive faces to animate the myth’s moment of revelation. After its creation, Vertumnus and Pomona became part of the Spanish royal collection, where it remained for centuries. While the precise attribution of some works from the Torre de la Parada series has been debated—given the heavy involvement of Rubens’s workshop—this painting is widely accepted as bearing the master’s own hand. Over time, the lodge fell into ruin, but many of the paintings, including this one, were preserved and transferred to the Prado Museum in Madrid, where they can be seen today.

The work stands as a testament to Rubens’s ability to blend classical narrative with the exuberant style of the Baroque, and to the international reach of his art in the service of European royalty.