Autumn

Corrado Giaquinto

National Gallery of Art

Nine men and women and three pudgy, toddler-aged children gather in small groups under a copse of trees against a deep landscape in this horizontal painting. Most of the people have pale, nearly white skin and a few have darker, peach-toned skin. They all have rosy cheeks, and most have strawberry or honey blond hair. The men and women wear loose robes in shades of topaz and ice blue, vibrant peach, pale pink, or harvest yellow, and the children appear to be nude. Light pours across the scene from the left. Two women sit in the lower left corner of the composition, mostly in shadow presumably created by trees outside our view. One leans toward us holding a tray of fruit with her dress nearly exposing her round breasts. A woman sitting closer to us holds up a fig as a child reaches for the fruit. Closer to us, a muscular man sits on the ground next to an urn the size of a backpack. One child next to the urn sits almost with their back as he holds up a cup, and a gold-colored horn hangs from a ribbon across the torso. Another child other leans forward closer to the man, a bunch of grapes held in both hands. A pile of grape vines with grapes and orange-colored fruit sits between the man and first child. Behind this trio, one woman picks fruit from a leafy tree, which has a grape vine growing around its thick trunk. Another woman sits in the shade of the tree and looks on, a piece of fruit in her hand. The final four people are gathered to the right, where one man supports another who leans limply away from us, one arm slung over his supporter’s shoulders. The partially prone man is bare-chested and wears a crown of grapevine leaves. More leaves are around his waist under a vivid, coral-red cloth, and his feet rest on a pile of figs, fruit, and grapes. A third man in this trio is the only one with a beard. He wears a cheetah animal skin and presses grapes in both hands to fill the cup held by the prone man. A woman stands between the pair, holding more grapes and looking off into the distance. Trees and bushes grow across the left half of the composition, and a distant landscape on the right half opens onto rolling hills and hazy mountains. The sky glows peach along the horizon and deepens to twilight blue across the top half of the painting.