Flora by Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2019

Flora, ca. 1654


Object Details

Artist: Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) (Dutch, Leiden 1606–1669 Amsterdam)

Date: ca. 1654

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 39 3/8 x 36 1/8 in. (100 x 91.8 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Archer M. Huntington, in memory of his father, Collis Potter Huntington, 1926

Accession Number: 26.101.10


Unlike many of his ambitious contemporaries, Rembrandt never traveled to Italy. Nonetheless, Italian art had a profound effect on him; in this depiction of the Roman goddess of spring, he responded to the sixteenth-century Venetian master Titian in particular. Still, the somber coloration and rough paint handling make this work unmistakably Rembrandt’s own, and the goddess may be based in part on a portrait of the artist’s deceased wife, Saskia, who had been the muse and inspiration for many of his paintings.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437398