Vertumnus and Pomona (Ovid, Metamorphoses: 623-771)

Entry

Ovid’s story of how Vertumnus disguised himself as an old woman in order to persuade the wood nymph Pomona to accept his advances was the most frequently depicted mythological subject in the northern Netherlands in the 17th century.⁴ The Pre-Rembrandtists, however, did not favour the subject and Tengnagel’s painting is the only extant rendering of it from this group of artists. Tengnagel’s painting itself is significantly different from those made of the theme only a few years earlier by such Mannerist artists as Abraham Bloemaert and Hendrick Goltzius.⁵ While on a much smaller scale, Tengnagel’s painting stands out especially for the way in which the theme is handled. Instead of showing Pomona as a voluptuous nude as Bloemaert and Goltzius had done, Tengnagel depicted her fully clothed as was the tradition in 16th-century print illustrations of the Metamorphoses. Even unlike the illustrated Metamorphoses, however, Tengnagel’s Pomona is a sturdy, rather plain-looking woman, seated on a wheelbarrow. She holds the sickle as in Ovid’s tale, and other gardening implements (shovel, rake, sieve and watering-can) have been placed prominently in the foreground.

According to Sluijter, Tengnagel’s aim in this painting was to bring Pomona’s story closer to the experiential realm of the contemporary viewer, thereby stressing its moral, namely that a maiden must reserve her virginity for the right suitor, and when he comes along she must give herself to him and not squander her opportunity to marry and bear children⁶ Sluijter argues that it was for this reason Tengnagel chose not to show Pomona as a nude, which would have been a clear reference to classical antiquity. Sluijter’s argument cannot be accepted; despite the fact that Pomona is fully clothed, a 17th-century viewer would not have mistaken her dress, nor that worn by Vertumnus, as contemporary costume. The type of dress worn by Pomona, including her ‘Roman’ sandals, are typically found in paintings with a pastoral theme, such as those by Pieter Lastman.⁷ Vertumnus’ robes in Tengnagel’s painting, moreover, are not much different from those worn by Vertumnus in Goltzius and Bloemaert’s renderings of the theme, and would have been considered historical by 17th-century viewers.

It is not only the fact that Pomona is fully clothed, that distinguishes Tengnagel’s painting from Goltzius’s and Bloemaert’s depictions of the subject. Tengnagel’s tiny painting is filled to overflowing with objects that, while not being out of place in a southern European garden, are laden with symbolism. The quite natural motif of Pomona resting her foot on a stone, for example, has been interpreted as a symbol of her steadfast rejection of all would-be suitors. In a different context, Van Mander states that ‘a foot resting on a stone (...) signifies resolve’.⁸ The painting includes a great deal more ‘disguised symbolism’. The walled garden in Ovid’s story and the painting is an obvious symbol of Pomona’s virginity.⁹ The broken pot in the left foreground is probably a symbol of the imminent loss of that virginity.¹⁰ The fountain and the peacock, which are not mentioned by Ovid, are symbols of fertility and marriage.¹¹ Another symbol of fertility is found in the form of the spring and summer zodiac signs on the hem of Pomona’s dress.¹² While a 17th-century viewer would certainly not have mistaken this scene for everyday Dutch reality, part of the charm of Tengnagel’s painting may well have been the distinguishing of the symbolism inherent in the seemingly ordinary objects. Tengnagel, perhaps, clothed his Pomona so that she too would not seem out of place in this, on the surface, mundane classical garden. There is no basis for Sluijter’s argument that Tengnagel avoided nudity in order to make his painting more acceptable to an audience that, unfamiliar with international poetic and pictorial conventions, would have had a critical, possibly religiously intolerant view of the pagan myths.¹³

It is possible that the painting was in a 1785 auction in The Hague, where it carried an attribution to Lastman.¹⁴ Indeed, the wayward twirls of the drapery, the treatment of the landscape, and the figure types are highly reminiscent of Lastman’s style. Lastman, too, often depicted conversation themes in which gestures play a primary role.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

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This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 279.