Three Graces Raphael (1483-1520)

Description of Raphael Santi’s painting The Three Graces

"The Three Graces" is a painting by Raphael depicting Innocence, Beauty and Love as the artist imagined them to be.

The girls are all very young, all have similarly colored hair, styled in a way that doesn’t look neat. Holding each other - because perfect love is always beautiful and innocent, perfect beauty is always innocent and able to love, perfect innocence is always beautiful and evokes love - they stand against a background of some river, on solid ground, from which only stunted bushes break through here and there. If you look closely, you can see the bones of some kind of animal - perhaps a hint that perfection kills?

The girls are holding perfect golden spheres, which may be an allusion to the apples of Hesperides, which Heracles extracted with his eleventh feat. Subsequently, the windy Paris was deciding which of the Greek goddesses to give them to: Hera, Aphrodite or Athena. But none of them was as worthy as Love, Innocence and Beauty.

Against the backdrop of the landscape, the girls appear as pure as snow, appealing to the eye. Despite the fact that the modern standard of beauty is different from their forms and in the eyes of a modern person they may not be beautiful, no one will dispute that their faces are full of inner light, that they make a surprisingly touching and pleasant impression, and their nudity does not cause any condemnation or discomfort, or awkwardness.

It is natural - why dress perfection and require him to follow human standards?

In the middle of the great "nowhere" three girls with soft and smooth features, playing with golden balls and gently smiling at each other, embodying the immortal, eternal and sung regardless of age.

Love is uplifting.

Beauty - attracts.

Innocence purifies the soul and requires inner conformity - it cannot be touched with dirty hands, because then the Atlanteans would drop the sky, which they have held for many thousands of years, onto the earth.