Skip to main content
Advanced Search
The Three Graces
The Three Graces

The Three Graces

Georg Petel (German, about 1601–1634)
about 1624
Country of Origin, for CustomsGermany
Medium/TechniqueGilded bronze
DimensionsOverall: 30.5 x 19.1 x 5.1 cm (12 x 7 1/2 x 2 in.)
Credit LineGift of John Goelet in honor of Hanns Swarzenski
Accession number1976.842
On View
On view
ClassificationsSculpture
Collections
Description
This sculpture is based on a painting of the same subject by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), and the figures originally supported a basket or bowl of fruit or flowers. The sculptor captured the corporeality of Rubens's figures and played on ideas of two- and three-dimensionality by working in relief, an intermediary between painting and sculpture in the round.
Provenance1878, Charles Emile Jacque (b. 1813 - d. 1894), Paris; December 13-14, 1878, Jacque sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, lot 21 [see note 1]. Paul Bournet de Verron (d. 1882), Paris [see note 2]; by inheritance to his brother-in-law, Mr. Bucquet (d. 1889); by inheritence to Antoinette and Maurice Bucquet, Paris [see note 2]. 1963, private collection, Paris [see note 3]. 1963, acquired on the Paris art market by Joseph de Chellinck d'Elseghem, Brussels; June 30, 1969, Elseghem sale, Sotheby's, London, lot 29, to David Peel and Co., London; 1969, sold by Peel to John Goelet, New York; 1976, year-end gift of John Goelet to the MFA. (Accession Date: January 12, 1977)

NOTES:
[1] Unless otherwise noted, the provenance is based upon Fiona Healy's catalogue entry in A House of Art: Rubens as Collector, by Kristin Lohse Belkin and Fiona Healy (Schoten, 2004), p. 257, cat. no. 62.

[2] On the Bournet de Verron collection and its provenance, see Gaston Migeon, "La Collection Bucquet-Bournet de Verron," Les Arts, vol. 10, no. 117 (September 1911): 7-22. M. and Mlle. Bucquet lent the sculpture to the "Exposition d'objets d'art du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance" (Jacques Seligmann, Paris, 1913), cat. no. 99.

[3] Connaissance des Arts, no. 134 (April, 1963): 47.