The Muses Urania and Calliope

Simon Vouet and Studio

National Gallery of Art

Two pale-skinned women wearing jewel-toned blue, pink, and yellow togas sit on the ground at the foot of a stone building, with three, winged, child-like putti flying nearby in this horizontal painting. The women take up most of the left half of the painting while the building behind them spans nearly three-quarters of the composition. A sliver of landscape is visible beyond the building to our right. Both women have dark, ash-brown hair wrapped back around diadems, long, straight noses, dark eyes, and smooth skin. Their cheeks are flushed, and their dark pink lips are parted. To our left, the first woman sits with her body facing our right in profile, and she turns to look at us from the corners of her eyes. Six silver stars line the sky-blue diadem in her hair. Her voluminous white shift falls off the shoulder closer to us, and she wears a swath of sapphire-blue drapery over her other arm and lap. One foot, wearing a yellow sandal, emerges from under the hem of her robe. She leans the elbow closer to us on a silver sphere, which comes a bit higher than her waist. Her other hand rests on the shoulder of the woman next to her. The second woman sits with her legs angled to our right, and she turns her face back to look at the first woman. She wears a butter-yellow garment under a rose-pink toga, and one foot, wearing a blue sandal, rests on the dirt ground. A baby-blue ribbon is tied through her hair, around a gold coronet. Her hands rest on a book in her lap. The partial word “odiss” is written along the edges of the pages facing us. Three pudgy angels with small blue wings flutter near the second woman, to our right. The putti have short, brown or blond, curly hair. Sashes in golden yellow, pink, or blue are tied around one shoulder and their opposite hips. They hold up three crowns of leaves. The building immediately behind the women and putti is parchment white streaked with brown. A tall foundation supports two columns, the base of which are near the top edge of the painting. A few plants grow out of the crevices, and a bush with white and light blue flowers grows behind the woman in blue, to our left. A landscape extends into the distance to our right, with rolling green hills, trees, and far-off, ice-blue mountains along the horizon. The sky above has apricot-peach and gray clouds against a pale blue sky.