Three Graces

Three figures held together

In The Three Graces, Peter Paul Rubens gives three standing women a shared movement. Their arms rest on one another's shoulders, their hands meet near the centre, and their feet shift as though they are turning slowly in a dance. One figure faces away from us; the women on either side turn inward. No single body contains the action. It passes around the circle they make together.

The Museo Nacional del Prado^[1] dates this large oil painting to 1630–35 and records its support as oak panel, measuring 220.5 × 182 centimetres. Its catalogue number is P001670. A precise date of 1639 would go beyond the Prado's current catalogue range. An earlier Prado encyclopedia essay suggests a stylistic date around 1635–40, and the RKD's related-works list for its separate Dulwich picture^[12] labels the Prado panel 1639. These different scholarly dates concern the same Madrid object; none is a dated inscription on the picture. This page uses the holding museum's current range and keeps the variation visible.

Rubens painted the Graces late in his career, when mythological subjects allowed him to work with the human figure, landscape and the character of painted light. The result is not simply three separate nudes placed side by side. Their limbs overlap, their gazes cross, and the woman whose back faces us carries our eye from one neighbour to the other. The circular arrangement lets the painter show three views of the body while preserving the sense that the women belong to one event.

At a Glance

• ArtistPeter Paul Rubens ^[1]
• Date1630–35 ^[1]
• MediumOil on oak panel ^[1]
• Dimensions220.5 × 182 cm ^[1]
• CollectionMuseo Nacional del Prado, P001670 ^[1]

Where this work sits in Rubens's career

Rubens's career

16001610162016301640

The Elevation of the Cross

1609–10

The Descent from the Cross

1611–14

The Garden of Love

1630–35

The Three Graces

1630–35

Contents

1. Who are the Graces?
2. A familiar motif used in different ways
3. Landscape, flowers and the fountain
4. Is Helena Fourment in the picture?
5. Made for whom, and how did it reach Madrid?
6. From panel to printed image

Who are the Graces?

The Graces, or Charites in Greek tradition, are divine figures associated with gifts, beauty, pleasure and sociability. Their names are commonly given as Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia. Artists had long pictured them together, often linking their bodies and turning one figure away from the viewer. The Prado's object essay^[1] places Rubens's circle in that visual tradition of ancient sculpture and Renaissance painting.

The picture does not identify the goddesses individually with inscriptions or attributes. Assigning a particular name to the left, centre or right figure would therefore add certainty the painting does not provide. What is visible is their relationship: they support one another and appear to move together. Their embrace gives a social form to the idea of grace. It is also an efficient composition. Three figures create one continuous rhythm, and the central back turns the group toward the viewer without breaking their inward attention.

The Prado's extended object essay^[1] gives this social meaning a longer history. The Graces could stand for generosity and reciprocity: a gift offered, received and returned. The museum cites Aristotle's account of a public shrine to the Graces as a reminder to repay kindness. In that light the joined hands do more than hold a graceful pose. They offer a pictorial analogy for exchange among people, while the three bodies keep the movement continuous rather than dividing it into a giver and a recipient.

The same essay places the Graces beside Venus in classical sources and notes their appearance in wedding poetry. These associations help connect their image to love and fertility without turning the Prado panel into a documented marriage commission. They also help explain why a fountain, flowers and generous landscape surround this particular group. The painting presents abundance as something shared, not merely an attribute carried by one figure.

In an earlier Prado catalogue essay^[3], Alejandro Vergara separates two strands of the ancient tradition. Hesiod and later poetry associate the Graces with beauty, love and desire; a moral tradition running through Aristotle and Seneca stresses friendship, liberality and reciprocal gifts. Neither strand has to exclude the other here. The women's exposed bodies, roses and fountain make pleasure visible, while their linked arms make relationship visible. Rubens presents the goddesses in a way that lets both traditions operate within the same group, rather than assigning a single symbolic job to each woman.

The transparent cloth at their legs scarcely hides the bodies. Rubens renders differences of angle and illumination across shoulders, backs, hands and faces. The figure at the centre is broad and close; the two facing women bring the viewer back into the circle through their expressions. Looking at the feet is especially revealing. They are not arranged like a stable monument, with six feet planted evenly. Their differing directions suggest the next small step of a dance. The Prado's description^[4] also reads this movement in the feet.

A familiar motif used in different ways

The three joined figures were not an invention Rubens made once for this panel. The RKD's scholarly catalogue of a separate Rubens Three Graces at Dulwich^[12] traces the ancient convention of a central figure seen from behind, with linked arms, through sculpture and prints. It also surveys Rubens's repeated variations: the Graces appear in his Marie de' Medici cycle, in drawings, and in designs that scholars have related to sculpture and luxury objects. The Dulwich work is a small monochrome panel with its own uncertain purpose; its paint, support and later alterations are not evidence about the Prado painting's surface. Its catalogue is valuable here because it shows how flexible the three-body pattern remained across Rubens's career.

That flexibility makes the Madrid panel more specific, not less. Rubens could use the Graces as attendants in another story or arrange similar figures for a three-dimensional object. In the Prado picture, they are the entire principal subject, with a landscape, fountain and rose garland built around their meeting. The central back still belongs to the long visual tradition, but the women turn their faces and touch one another in ways that make the ancient pattern feel like a social encounter. The lack of a known preparatory sketch for this panel remains the Prado's stated position; a different Rubens drawing or another Three Graces should not automatically be promoted into one.

Vergara's Prado essay^[3] counts the Graces in at least nine Rubens paintings, sometimes as supporting figures or even as an image within the image. In the Prado's Garden of Love, they appear as a sculpted group inside a portico; the people at the party, not the goddesses, drive the scene. In The Consequences of War, a drawing of the Graces lies under Mars's feet. Rubens's own explanation of that picture identifies a trampled drawing and book with the arts and letters threatened by war; Vergara identifies the little drawing's subject as the Graces. The comparison gives this Madrid panel a sharper character. Here the Graces are neither architectural ornament nor an endangered image on the ground. They stand at full scale as a complete vision of shared pleasure and exchange.

Landscape, flowers and the fountain

The figures stand before a wooded landscape opening onto a distant blue horizon. A garland of red and pale roses hangs above them, tying the women to the branches that frame the scene. At the right, a fountain with a child and a cornucopia introduces flowing water and an image of abundance. The Prado notes a few painted touches that may indicate a wing on the child; if so, it could be Cupid. That identification is possible, rather than a settled fact. The painting's effect does not require the child to be named.

Light moves differently across this setting and the figures. Sun filters through the trees toward the distance, but the women's bodies are lit from the viewer's side. The Prado's object account^[1] points out that the lighting is designed for pictorial effect instead of obeying a single natural source. It makes the pale forms emerge from the darker foliage while the far landscape retains its own atmosphere.

The flowers are more than a strip of decoration. They hover over the joined bodies, repeat soft curves and add bright colour near the top of the composition. A Prado botanical guide^[5] identifies several cultivated roses in the garland and notes an unusual flowering plant against the sky. Its suggestion that the unusual plant may have held special meaning for Rubens remains a suggestion; the painting itself does not supply an explanation. The garland, the fountain and the distant light make a setting of fertility and plenty around the human circle.

The Prado's plain-language guide^[13] also points out two deer at the left, connecting them with the picture's language of love. They are small beside the bodies, fountain and flowers, but their presence makes the setting more than a neutral backdrop. At the same time, the panel does not label each element with a fixed mythological meaning. Rubens lets animals, roses and water create an atmosphere of affection and abundance while the Graces' linked hands remain the clearest expression of relationship.

Is Helena Fourment in the picture?

The woman at the left resembles portraits of Rubens's second wife, Helena Fourment. Rubens married her in December 1630, within the Prado's date range for the painting. The Prado's interpretation^[1] considers the possibility that her likeness helped shape the figure and that the other Graces welcome her into the group. It also notes an intriguing detail: only one set of contemporary clothing hangs from a branch, though the subject belongs to antiquity.

Those details make a personal reading plausible; they do not establish that Helena sat as a model for one identifiable goddess or that Rubens meant the work as a literal portrait of her. The Prado explicitly leaves the proposed narrative open. A viewer can see the resemblance and the modern clothes while still recognising three mythological figures. Rubens could bring a familiar face and a contemporary note into an ancient subject without making the whole picture a record of a particular afternoon or a documented domestic event.

The difference between an interpretation and an identification is clear in the Prado's 2020 interview with George Bisacca^[6]. Having worked closely with the panel, he offers a personal reading in which the Grace at the right represents Rubens's deceased first wife and meets Helena at the left. It is a moving way to see the embrace, but Bisacca calls it his view, and the museum's object essay treats even Helena's proposed presence as an open question. There is no documented portrait identification for the right-hand figure. The painting invites a biographical response while keeping its mythological subject intact.

The uncertainty is useful. It prevents the picture from being reduced to a guessing game about which woman is Helena. The composition offers more to look at: the varied positions of the three figures, the delicately shared gestures, the purposeful lighting and the way flowers and water surround them. The personal possibility enriches the work, but its visual structure is strong without a definitive identification.

There is a documented portrait against which the resemblance can be considered. The Alte Pinakothek in Munich^[8] holds Rubens's Helene Fourment in Her Bridal Gown, dated about 1630/31. It is an identified portrait on oak, a separate painting with its own setting and development. The Munich museum notes that Rubens enlarged that portrait's original three-quarter-length design while working. Its existence makes the Prado's comparison to Helena more grounded than a likeness imagined without a reference. It does not turn one of the Graces into the same sitter in the documentary sense: the Prado panel lacks a surviving record of who posed for each figure or a preparatory study fixing their identities.

Made for whom, and how did it reach Madrid?

Rubens still owned The Three Graces when he died in 1640. The Prado says no preparatory sketch for it is known, and its present object essay considers it likely that he made the painting for himself. That is a reasoned interpretation of the evidence, not a surviving statement of his original intention. A work kept in the artist's collection could have had more than one intended future, and the absence of a known sketch cannot prove that none was ever made.

The later route of the painting is clearer in part and uncertain in part. The Prado's historical essay^[3] says it is not listed in the only known list of paintings purchased by Philip IV from Rubens's heirs. Nevertheless, it is documented in the Spanish royal collection at the Madrid Alcázar by 1666. The museum suggests it may have been acquired by the king in a separate transaction or through an intermediary; the exact path is not established by that list. The current object record's provenance follows the painting through later royal settings and into the museum.

That later history changed who could see the image. The Prado's provenance list^[1] places the painting in rooms of the royal Alcázar, then the new palace, and by the early nineteenth century in the reserved room of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. It was also recorded in the Royal Museum's reserved room in 1834. Those entries document settings for the work, not the identities of individual viewers. They make clear that today's public museum encounter follows a long period of royal and restricted display, during which a large mythological nude had a different audience from the one it has now.

Vergara's historical account for the Prado^[3] explains the restriction more directly: the painting belonged to a group of nudes judged offensive in the eighteenth century and moved to the Academy. He dates its move to the Prado to 1827 and records that a room for Flemish painting opened in 1839. The current object provenance also records a reserved museum room in 1834, so arrival at the Prado should not be confused with immediate unrestricted display. The Graces' meaning had not changed on the panel, but the institutions displaying it had made decisions about the kind of audience allowed to see it.

The Prado also records a 1997–98 restoration of the painting and its wooden support. This history matters because The Three Graces is an oak panel, not a canvas, despite its scale. Its material, date and provenance should all be taken from the holding museum rather than from generic descriptions of Rubens's mythological paintings. They distinguish this particular object from copies, later prints and other treatments of the subject.

The support's later history is unusually tangible. In a Prado interview^[6], panel conservator George Bisacca recalls the 1997–98 treatment with José de la Fuente and the decision to replace a large ornate frame. The team chose a simpler frame informed by seventeenth-century Netherlandish collection images. They also shaped it slightly to accommodate a warp in the oak support. These are conservation and display decisions centuries after Rubens painted the panel; they are not evidence that the painting originally had that exact frame. They remind us that a very large wooden painting continues to behave as a physical object and that what a visitor sees includes later care.

Bisacca also explains a change made during the painting's creation. In his Prado interview^[6], he says Rubens first placed the figures close to the edges, then added pieces of panel at the left, top and right to give them more room. This is a specific observation about the Madrid object's support, not a general claim that every Rubens panel was enlarged. It changes how we understand the surrounding trees, garland and fountain: the spacious setting was part of a composition Rubens adjusted, rather than a fixed container into which the three bodies were simply inserted. Bisacca's further thought that Rubens could continue improving a picture kept in his house is an interpretation of why it changed; the additions themselves are the firmer material observation.

A contemporary 1998 account quoting de la Fuente and Dávila^[7] describes another, much later alteration: a rigid wooden structure attached to the back in an earlier restoration had contributed to cracks and paint loss as the panel moved. During the Prado treatment, the conservators removed it and devised a more flexible support; the painted surface was cleaned and smaller losses addressed. These interventions should not be confused with Rubens's own additions. One changed the composition while he worked; the other sought to stabilize an object that had survived centuries of handling and display.

The Prado's restoration summary^[3] names Rocío Dávila for treatment of the paint layer and Bisacca and de la Fuente for the wooden support. Its record of the 1998 exhibition catalogue^[14] also identifies separate studies by Carmen Garrido on the painting's making, by the support conservators, by Dávila on the paint, and by Timothy Newbery on the frame. The catalogue record establishes who examined which part; it does not by itself provide their detailed technical findings. The division of work is still instructive: conserving a picture this large meant addressing the joined oak boards, the painted surface and the frame as related but different problems.

Bisacca describes the work as an unusually intimate painting that Rubens could revisit because he kept it at home. That is the conservator's interpretation, consistent with the painting's presence in Rubens's estate. It is suggestive, but it should not be converted into a documented day-by-day account of how often Rubens changed the surface. The stronger fact is that he retained the finished painting, leaving us a rare chance to consider a major mythological work he did not immediately part with.

From panel to printed image

The Prado picture also circulated in a different medium. Musea Brugge^[9] catalogues an engraving by Pieter de Jode II after Rubens's Three Graces in Madrid. Its impression is an early state before the publisher's address, and the museum dates the sheet broadly to about 1630–45. This is evidence for a printed afterlife of the design, not an extra Rubens painting or a secure date for the original panel. A sheet about 48.5 centimetres high translated a painting over two metres tall into a format that could travel and be collected. The three-body arrangement remained legible even when the colour, oak support and painted surface could no longer carry its effect.

Another impression of de Jode's print in the Hessen Kassel Heritage collection^[10] preserves a revealing inscription. It credits Rubens for the painted model and de Jode for the engraving, then quotes Horace's Odes 1.4 on the Graces striking the earth in alternating steps. The poem's Latin text^[11] places them beside nymphs in a springtime dance led by Venus. The inscription is a choice made for the print, not text written on Rubens's oak panel and not proof that Rubens selected Horace as a programme for his painting.

Even with that limit, the printed line gives a historically specific way to notice something visible in the canvas: the women's feet point in different directions, so their linked circle feels ready to move. The print also reverses the painted design, as the Kassel record notes. Its caption therefore carries one reading of the Graces across a changed image. A collector who knew the engraving could encounter the group through classical poetry and printmaking before ever seeing the large coloured panel in Madrid. The two objects share a design, but each provides a different set of clues for its audience.

Rubens artworks directory

128 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium
A Seated Lion / Study of a Seated Lion	Circa 1612–1613	Drawing
Adam and Eve	1598–1600	Painting
Albert Rubens in Profile to the Left	Circa 1619	Drawing
Allegory of Emperor Charles V as Ruler of the World	Circa 1604	Painting
An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning	Probably 1636	Painting
Atalanta and Meleager Hunting the Calydonian Boar	1635–1640	Painting
Bildnis einer Frau / Portrait of a Woman (traditionally identified as Isabella Brant)		Painting
Christ on the Cross / Christus aan het kruis (oil modello)	1628	Painting
Cows, Study for a Painting		Drawing
Daniel in the Lions' Den	Circa 1614–1616	Painting
Das Opfer Abrahams / The Sacrifice of Abraham (drawing after Titian)		Drawing
Der Triumph des Siegers / The Triumph of Victory	Circa 1614	Painting
Diana and Callisto	Circa 1635	Painting
Don Diego Messía (Mexía) Felipe de Guzmán, Marquis of Leganés		Drawing
Epitaph of Nicolaas Rockox and His Wife Adriana Perez (traditionally The Incredulity of Thomas)	1613–1615	Painting
Equestrian Portrait of Giovan Carlo Doria / Ritratto di Giovan Carlo Doria a cavallo	1607–1608	Painting
Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma	1603	Painting
Ex-voto: Virgin and Child with portraits of the donors Alexandre Goubau and Anna Anthony		Painting
Ganymede / Ganymed	1611–1612	Painting
Georges Villiers, Herzog von Buckingham / George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham		Drawing
Gesatteltes Pferd / Saddled Horse	Circa 1615–1618	Drawing
Head of a Woman with Downcast Eyes (study for the Madonna of the Ildefonso Altarpiece)		Drawing
I quattro filosofi / The Four Philosophers	Circa 1611–1612	Painting
Ignudo Turning to the Right (after Michelangelo)	Circa 1606	Drawing
Juno and Argus	Circa 1610	Painting
La Marche de Silène / The Procession of Silenus		Drawing
Lamentation over the Dead Christ / Compianto su Cristo morto	1601–1602	Painting
Landscape with Philemon and Baucis		Painting
Landscape with St George and the Dragon	1630–1635	Painting
Landscape with the Ruins of the Palatine Hill in Rome / Paysage avec les ruines du mont Palatin à Rome	Circa 1614–1618	Painting
Leda and the Swan (Stephen Mazoh collection version)	Before 1600	Painting
Les Pèlerins d'Emmaüs / The Supper at Emmaus (Saint-Eustache version)	Circa 1608–1611	Painting
Madonna della Vallicella Adored by Angels / Madonna con Bambino e angeli	1606–1608	Painting
Madonna in a Garland of Flowers / Madonna im Blumenkranz	Circa 1616–1618	Painting
Madonna Surrounded by Saints / Madonna met heiligen	Circa 1630	Painting
Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria	1606	Painting
Marchesa Maria Serra Pallavicino (?)	1606	Painting
Marie de Medici, Queen of France	Circa 1622	Painting
Mercury and Argus / Merkur und Argus	Circa 1635–1638	Painting
Neptune Calming the Tempest (Quos Ego); modello for the Cardinal Infante's voyage	1635	Painting
Nikolaus Rubens		Drawing
Ochse / Ox	Circa 1618	Drawing
Old Woman and Boy with Candles	Circa 1616–1617	Painting
Pan and Syrinx	Circa 1617	Painting
Perseus and Andromeda		Painting
Perseus frees Andromeda	1620–1622	Painting
Philippe Rubens, the Artist's Brother	1610	Painting
Portrait du duc de Lerma / Study for the Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma	Circa 1603	Drawing
Portrait of a Bearded Man / Bildnis eines Mannes mit Vollbart	Circa 1604–1605	Drawing
Portrait of a Man, Possibly an Architect or Geographer	1597	Painting
Portrait of Aletheia Talbot, Countess of Arundel	1620	Painting
Portrait of Anne of Austria, Queen of France	Circa 1622	Painting
Portrait of George Gerbier, son of Balthasar Gerbier (identification qualified)	1629–1630	Drawing
Portrait of Isabella Brant (portrait drawing)	Circa 1620–1621	Drawing
Portrait of Louis XIII, King of France	Circa 1622	Painting
Portrait of Marie de Médicis as a Triumphant Queen		Painting
Portrait of Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume	1617	Drawing
Portrait of the Emperor Charles V (after Titian)	Circa 1603–1605	Painting
Prometheus Bound		Painting
Romulus and Remus / Romolo e Remo	1612	Painting
Rubens and Isabella Brant in the Honeysuckle Bower	Circa 1609–1610	Painting
Saint George and the Dragon	1606–1608	Painting
Saint Gregory with Saints, venerating the Madonna of Vallicella	1606–1607	Painting
Saint James the Greater / Santiago el Mayor	1610–1612	Painting
Saint Jerome in His Study / Der heilige Hieronymus	Circa 1609–1610	Painting
Saint Sebastian / Der heilige Sebastian	Circa 1612–1618	Painting
Saints Amandus and Walburga, exterior wing of The Elevation of the Cross	1609–1610	Painting
Saints Catherine of Alexandria and Eligius, exterior wing of The Elevation of the Cross	1609–1610	Painting
Salome Presented with the Head of Saint John the Baptist	Circa 1609	Painting
Samson and Delilah	Circa 1609–1611	Painting
Satyr and Maid with Fruit Basket	Circa 1615	Painting
Scipio and Hannibal before the Battle of Zama		Drawing
Self-portrait	1623	Painting
Self-Portrait in a Circle of Friends from Mantua	Circa 1602–1605	Painting
Study of the Laocoön and His Sons (after the ancient Vatican sculpture)	Circa 1600–1608	Drawing
Summer: Peasants Going to Market		Painting
Susanna Fourment	Circa 1620	Drawing
The Adoration of the Magi / L'Adoration des mages	Circa 1617–1618	Painting
The Annunciation	Circa 1610	Painting
The Arrival of the Queen at Lyon (Meeting of King and Queen, 9 December 1600)		Painting
The Assumption of the Virgin Mary	1625–1626	Painting
The Baptism of Christ	1604–1605	Painting
The Battle of Anghiari (drawing after Leonardo's lost composition)		Drawing
The Battle of the Amazons / Die Amazonenschlacht	Circa 1618	Painting
The Capture of Jülich, 1 September 1610		Painting
The Child with the Bird / Das Kind mit dem Vogel		Painting
The Circumcision of Christ / La Circoncisione di Gesù	1605	Painting
The Consequences of War	1638	Painting
The Defeat of Sennacherib / Die Niederlage Sanheribs	Circa 1617	Painting
The Descent from the Cross, triptych	1611–1614	Painting
The Discovery of the Child Erichthonius / Die Auffindung des Erichthoniusknaben	Circa 1616	Painting
The Disembarkation of the Queen at Marseille, 3 November 1600		Painting
The Elevation / Raising of the Cross, triptych	1609–1610	Painting
The Entombment / Graflegging	1615–1617	Drawing
The Fall of Phaeton	Circa 1604–05	Painting
The Feast of Herod	Circa 1635–1638	Painting
The Feast of Venus	1636–1637	Painting
The Garden of Love / El jardín del amor	1630–1635	Painting
The Gonzaga Family in Adoration of the Holy Trinity / La famiglia Gonzaga in adorazione della Santissima Trinità		Painting
The Head of Medusa		Painting
The Hippopotamus and Crocodile Hunt	Circa 1616	Painting
The Holy Family with Saint Anne	Circa 1630	Painting
The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist	1614–1615	Painting
The Immaculate Conception	1628–1629	Painting
The Judgement of Paris (Prado early Italian-period version)	1606–1608	Painting
The Kermesse / La Kermesse (also Village Festival)	Circa 1635–1638	Painting
The Lamentation of Christ / Die Beweinung Christi	1610–1611	Painting
The Last Supper / Institution of the Eucharist	1631–1632	Painting
The Lion Hunt / Löwenjagd	1621	Painting
The Massacre of the Innocents		Painting
The Massacre of the Innocents (early Toronto version)	Circa 1610	Painting
The Rainbow Landscape	Circa 1636	Painting
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus / Raub der Töchter des Leukippos	Circa 1618	Painting
The Resurrection of Christ, Jan Moretus epitaph triptych	1611–1612	Painting
The Return from the Fields / Ritorno dai campi	Circa 1632–1634	Painting
The Three Graces	1630–1635	Painting
The Triumph of the Eucharist over Idolatry	Circa 1625	Painting
Three Groups of Apostles in a Last Supper (recto); Three Sketches for Medea and Her Children (verso)	About 1601–1602	Drawing
Three Women Holding Garlands (after Francesco Primaticcio)	Circa 1622–1627	Drawing
Two Young Women, the One on the Left Holding a Dog / Zwei junge Frauen, die linke hält einen Hund	Circa 1616–1618	Drawing
Venus and Adonis (Hermitage swan-chariot version)	1610–1611	Painting
Venus and Adonis (Metropolitan Museum late version)		Painting
Venus Frigida	1614	Painting
Venus in Front of the Mirror / The Toilet of Venus	Circa 1614–1615	Painting
Venus Lamenting over the Dead Adonis	Circa 1612	Drawing
Venus, Amor, Bacchus und Ceres / Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres	Circa 1612–1613	Painting
Wolf and Fox Hunt	Circa 1616	Painting
Young Woman Looking Down (Study for the Head of Saint Apollonia)	Circa 1628	Drawing

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Museo Nacional del Prado, The Three Graces , current collection record and essay. View source
2. Museo Nacional del Prado, Las tres Gracias , Spanish collection record and provenance. View source
3. Museo Nacional del Prado, encyclopedia essay on Rubens's Three Graces. View source
4. Museo Nacional del Prado, one-hour museum guide. View source
5. Museo Nacional del Prado, botanical guide. View source
6. Museo Nacional del Prado, interview with panel conservator George Bisacca about The Three Graces. View source
7. Winston Manrique Sabogal, 1998 report quoting Prado conservators José de la Fuente and Rocío Dávila on the restoration. View source
8. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Rubens's identified portrait of Helene Fourment in Munich. View source
9. Musea Brugge, Pieter de Jode II's engraving after the Prado Three Graces. View source
10. Hessen Kassel Heritage, Pieter de Jode II's engraving and its Horace inscription. View source
11. Dickinson Classics Online, Horace, Odes 1.4, Latin text. View source
12. RKD Studies, Dulwich Picture Gallery catalogue of Rubens's distinct Three Graces sketch and the broader motif. View source
13. plain-language guide. View source
14. record of the 1998 exhibition catalogue. View source

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