Description of the picture:
Harvest (Summer) – David Teniers the Younger. 1644. Oil on canvas. 49.8×69.6
The theme “Seasons” was popular in Flemish painting of the XVI-XVII centuries. Turning to the plot “Harvest” (or “Summer”), Teniers continued the traditions of artists of the early XVII century.
On the canvas “Harvest” The scenes of summer labor and rest of peasants are captured at the same time. The background of the picture is a landscape with a rainbow and a village church. The rainbow motif is probably borrowed from the works of Rubens (for example, “Landscape with a Rainbow”). However, in Teniers’ Harvest, this motive is interpreted in a peculiar way and he has a different role.
First of all, because the rainbow (on the left) is depicted along with the church (in the center of the background), the spire of which is directed to the sky. Thanks to a comparison with the church, the rainbow motive makes us turn to its original meaning, revealed in the Bible. The rainbow seems to remind both the characters of the picture and its viewers about the covenant between God and man after the end of the pursuit. God told Noah: “I lay My rainbow in the cloud, so that it is a sign between Me and the earth.” Thus, the purely genre, at first glance, scene of Teniers has a religious connotation and hidden symbolic meaning.
The canvas was probably created in 1644, since it shows a stylistic closeness with another Teniers’ Hermitage work dating back to this time (1644, “Landscape with a Country Zucchini”)."
