# Vertumnus and Pomona [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [BLOEMAERT, Abraham]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 98 x 125 cm ## Commentary Pomona, the classical goddess of fruit, and Vertumnus, the god of transformation, are the main figures in an episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses which is depicted here. Vertumnus enters Pomona's grove in order to convince her of his love. Because she had always run away on previous occasions when he came, he has cunningly dressed as an old woman on this occasion. By telling her about the allegory of the grapevine and elm, he is able to convince her of the importance of togetherness, for the grapevine needs something it can climb up and the elm, when considered on its own, is useless. Persuaded, Pomona gives in to love and her innermost longings and they become a couple. This is the last, largest and most accomplished of Bloemaert's treatments of this Ovidian subject, in which his earlier Mannerist traits have all but disappeared, to be replaced with a monumental classicism. The painting is signed and dated upper right: A.Bloemaert fc: / 1620. ## Related artworks - [A Cottage \(recto\)]() - [Adoration of the Magi]() - [Adoration of the Shepherds]() - [Adoration of the Shepherds]() - [Allegory of Winter]() - [Apollo and Diana Punishing Niobe by Killing her Children]() - [Charikleia and Theagenes]() - [Farmyard]() - [Farmyard with Dovecote]() - [Huntsman with Dogs]() - [Landscape with Peasants Resting]() - [Landscape with the Parable of the Tares among the Wheat]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()