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Lindsey Tolley
Hello, I'm Lindsey Tolley with the David Owsley Museum of Art, and this is your Owsley moment, brought to you by IPR and the Ball State School of Art.

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Lindsey Tolley


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Lindsey Tolley
Falling in love can make the world seem so beautiful. But in Jean François de Troy’s Vertumnus Wooing Pomona. A lovely romantic scene holds darker implications, as the oil painting depicts two figures sitting in an orchard. In the background there are overgrown plants and grapes hanging from an arbor. A basket of fruit lies within our reach. In the foreground, the left figure is a partially nude woman holding a peach by her lap.

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Lindsey Tolley
She is Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees, gardens and orchards. On the right, an old woman dressed in golden tile kneels and looks up into Pomona's face with adoration. The old woman is really Vertumnus, the male god of Changing Seasons, who has disguised himself to enter the orchard and tricked Pomona into accepting his sexual advances. De Troy painted this scene sometime between 1717 and 1723.

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Lindsey Tolley
Its style is rococo, a romantic, sexual, and escapist artistic movement that prides itself on capturing aristocratic leisure and fashion. Rococo painters also enjoyed mythological scenes, like this ancient Greco-Roman legend of Vertumnus and Pomona, which had several interpretations that could be twisted into pretty and playful compositions. Wealthy women flocked to these painters, who could depict the ladies as goddesses, wearing the newest fashion trends and displaying their aristocratic power.

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Lindsey Tolley
Living off commissions alone, Rococo painters often created romantic images that flatter their female subjects and obscure myths. Darker secret.

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Lindsey Tolley
We'd like to thank Ball State student Casie Bare for their research, and if you would like to hear past episodes of the Owsley moment, visit Indiana Public radio.org. To learn more about the David Owsley Museum of Art, visit bsu.edu/doma.