Cupids Decorating Niche,

ca. 1630–40

This is a study in reverse for Cornelis Galle’s engraving after a design by Peter Paul Rubens. In the completed print, the Virgin and the infant Jesus are posed, as in an ancient Greek or Roman statue, in an architectural niche—still an empty frame in the drawing. The frame deploys the language of classical antiquity: the cherubim and the garlands, with connotations of abundance and fertility, were common motifs in Roman art. Still, the contents of the garlands anchor the drawing in the seventeenth century. New World plants such as zucchini, pumpkins, and corn were not part of the European garden or diet until the sixteenth century. Galle’s drawing also includes bunches of carrots— a vegetable that only took on its modern form in the early seventeenth century, when Dutch horticulturalists developed carrot plants with sweet, juicy roots.