Simon Vouet and studio, 'Ceres and Harvesting Cupids', probably 1634-5

This scene is an allegory of the harvest. Ceres, goddess of the earth and fertility, gathers corn with a group of winged infants, known as putti. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ceres was commonly shown crowned with a garland of corn. She often appears as one of the Four Elements (Earth) or one of the Four Seasons (Summer).

The work was probably commissioned by Claude de Bullion (1570–1640), a government official, for his Paris residence. Vouet decorated the walls and ceiling of a gallery at this house and provided paintings for the rooms at either end between 1634 and 1635, which may be when this work was created. In 1765, the French courtier Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville (1680–1765) described three paintings by Vouet in a small study on the first floor. They showed The Hunt symbolised by Diana and Actaeon, the Wine Harvest by Silenus and satyrs, and the Corn Harvest, which may be this painting.

It is likely that studio assistants contributed to this painting given that it was placed in a room at the end of a gallery and perhaps in a subsidiary position in panelling over a door. Some parts of the composition look as though they were painted by assistants: there is a lack of finish with visible and loose brushstrokes in some areas of the landscape, the two peasants cutting corn and the putti in the foreground. The figure of Ceres has been painted with more skill and is probably by Vouet himself. The area intended for the figure of Ceres was left unpainted by the assistant responsible for painting the surrounding cornfield and trees. The identity of Vouet’s assistants remains uncertain: the landscapes were perhaps painted by Frederick Scalberge and Pierre Patel (about 1605–1676), and the figures partly the work of Nicolas Chaperon (1612–1656).

Vouet spent his early career in Rome and travelled to Paris in 1627 at the request of King Louis XIII (1601–1643). In the 1630s, when this painting was probably created, Vouet was at the height of his success in Paris with an established studio of assistants.