Harmony or the three graces

Goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility. from youngest to oldest: Aglaea ("Splendor"), Euphrosyne ("Mirth"), and Thalia ("Good Cheer").

Hans Baldung Grien
alemania 1541-1544
oleo en tabla
museo del prado

Two semi-nude youths hold a book from which one is reading. On the right, a third youth holds a lute in his hand, and has a viola at his feet. Three nude children complete the scene. The one in the foreground has a swan and a piece of sheet music. A snake wound around a tree in the background completes this allegorical representation whose complex reading alludes to life's pleasures: beauty, music and reading. Its interpretation becomes clearer when seen with its companion The Ages of Man and Death

Death, with his hourglass and broken spear, leads an old woman by the arm. She, in turn, seeks to drag along a young woman at the height of her beauty. A baby lies sleeping on the ground, alongside an owl. A desolate and eerie landscape serves as the sinister setting. Christ appears in the sky, and there is a cross in the sun.

This painting and its companion, Harmony or The Three Graces (P2219) belong to the artist's last period. Together they describe a complex but clear moralizing allegory that alludes to the fragility of human existence in general, and the destruction of beauty in particular. This one is characterized by a tenebrous Germanic expressionism that tends to move the viewer in the manner of a vanitas, a reminder of the brevity of life.