Who were the three graces and how do they represent female beauty in art history?

The three graces in the Renaissance

Rafael

It was especially during the Renaissance that the goddesses, as well as other mythological figures, became a recurring theme in painting.

Rafael, The Three Graces, 1504-5, Condé Museum.

Representing women as mythological characters was a way of representing the naked female body, otherwise, it would be too shocking.

In Rafael’s painting, clearly based on ancient sculptures, there is an emphasis on the pallor and the indifferent gaze of the girls. Although their bodies are mature, the sexual organs are subtly displayed and the breasts are not exposed.

Lucas Cranach

Lucas Cranach “The Elder”, The Three Graces, 1531. Louvre Museum.

Lucas Cranach, like Rafael, portrayed the Three Graces completely naked, but in his work the girls do not hold symbolic attributes, like the apple or flowers.

Instead, they have props (a hat and necklaces). Only one of the girls relies on her sister, unlike other paintings in which they are always hand in hand.

The Graces of Raphael and Cranach have something in common: their bodies resemble teenage bodies. The ideal of beauty seems to reside precisely in the youth of the models.

The three graces by Peter Paul Rubens and Alessandro Varotari

Peter Paul Rubens, The Three Graces, 1630-5, Museo del Prado.

A little different from Rafael’s depiction is that of the painter Rubens, who opted for more mature Graces, with not so firm bodies, and more opulent forms. Also, notice how their gazes intersect, perhaps suggesting a little more intimacy.

The composition, however, is practically the same. Two of the girls are seen frontally, while the other is represented from the rear.

Alessandro Varotari (Il Padovanino), the 3 graces  c.1620-1640. Private collection.

Alessandro Varotari (Il Padovanino)

This painter alters this composition, placing two of the girls face front, while the third one turns her back on the observer.

Though naked, girls wear veils, an element that is repeated in other Three Graces paintings.

In the 19th century

Koloman Moser

About two centuries later, when mythological themes began to be reviewed the three graces paintings continued to be created.

The iconography, however, changed as it no longer showed realistic or anatomically perfect bodies, like in Rafael’s painting, neither the atmosphere was idyllic nor romantic, like in Varotari’s.

Koloman Moser, for example, pointed out in his Three Graces only the side of the body of each, the skins of ochra tone and red veins. The composition, which is symbolist, does not present a garden or field as it was before.

Koloman Moser, unknown date, private collection

In Moser’s painting, it was not only the structure of the composition that changed, but also the technique and, above all, the ideal of feminine beauty.

Lawrence Tadema

And speaking of changes in representation, Sir Lawrence Tadema creates his version of Three Graces painting making use of a complex set of symbols.

In addition to representing the three figures in the center, he showed the other graces in the corners of the work (in the top left, for example, Law, Order, and Authority). As in the previous paintings, the women are very close, but Tadema only portrays their faces.

The three graces by Robert Delaunay

At the beginning of the 20th century, when the European avant-garde movements were at their peak, the painter Robert Delaunay placed The Three Graces in the Villa of Paris.

Although Delaunay fragments the characters, it is still possible to see clearly that he follows the same compositional structure as Raphael.

Robert Delaunay, La Ville de Paris, 1912. Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

The Three Graces are a beautiful inspiration from much of what it is to be a woman.

Although the characters are the same, the representations over time have changed a lot. Sometimes thin and with children’s bodies, sometimes more mature, naked or dressed, long or short hair… These paintings prove that the idea of beauty is dynamic and changes all the time.

And that is where the paradox lies: the ideal of feminine beauty is not ONE ideal. Every woman has a particularity that makes her more beautiful. And that is the real Grace of being a woman.