Three Graces

Barely seventeen centimetres square, this tiny panel holds three figures in perfect balance: the young Raphael's Three Graces is small enough to hold in two hands and rich enough to keep scholars debating.

The story behind the painting

Raphael painted The Three Graces early in his career, at some point after he arrived to study with Pietro Perugino around 1500. Its exact date is uncertain: Wikipedia suggests possibly 1503-1505, while Wikidata gives 1504. The painting is tiny, about 17 by 17 centimetres, and it is kept in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, France. According to James Patrick, writing in 2007, it is the first time Raphael depicted the nude female form in both front and back views. Its subject comes from classical mythology: three of the Graces, companions long beloved by artists in Italy.

What to look for

Look at how the three figures stand close together, shoulder to shoulder, the central one turned away from us and the two outer ones facing forward. Each holds a small golden sphere, which some scholars read as golden apples. The figure on the left wears a girdle. Wikidata notes details such as chestnut hair gathered in a chignon, a necklace, and long hair falling to the waist. Behind them stretches a calm landscape. On such a small square surface, every gesture had to be placed with care, and the result feels quiet, measured and harmonious.

Meaning and intent

Interpretations vary. One reading sees the three women as stages in a woman's life, from the girded maiden on the left, Chastity, to maturity on the right, Pleasure. In 1930 Erwin Panofsky proposed that the panel formed a diptych with Raphael's Vision of a Knight and showed the Hesperides with the golden apples taken by Hercules. Others disagree. Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny note the change in scale between the two works, though one might have served as the lid of the other. Michael Wayne Cole sees them as a pair, not a diptych, with the figures as handmaidens of Venus linking Virtue and Love.

Legacy

Where did Raphael find his model? It is often said he was inspired by a damaged Roman marble group in the Piccolomini Library of Siena Cathedral. But the subject was popular in Italy, and Julia Cartwright argued that the painting shows more influence from the school of Ferrara than from classical sculpture. These open questions, about date, source and meaning, are part of the painting's charm. Wikidata classes it as a High Renaissance mythological painting and a nude. In Chantilly, this small square continues to invite close looking.