Apollo Leading the Four Seasons in a Dance, While Father Time Plays the Harp

Claude Lorrain’s pastoral landscapes, incorporating ancient mythological subject matter into natural settings, were extraordinarily pleasing to the eighteenth-century English imagination. The subject here is the transience of human life, as signified by the dance of the Seasons and Father Time’s continuous play. The Italian inscription roughly translates as: "Apollo is about to usher in the seasons. Springtime begins with a dance . . . Summer never lacks for warmth. Autumn brings its own sweet flavors while Winter has its own rude savor." Claude has integrated the figures into the classical landscape in such a way that the Four Seasons, with their flowing robes and leafy headdresses, have as much in common visually with the gently swaying trees behind them as they do with Apollo who guides them forward.