This marble statue is based on one sculpted by Antonio Canova for Empress Josephine between 1813 and 1816. Called The Three Graces, it depicted the Graces, or Charities, of Ancient Greek mythology.

The Graces were daughters of Zeus and Hera or Eurynome. Their raison d’être was pleasure – they were the goddesses of play and happiness and relaxation and charm and beauty and nature and creativity and fertility: all that was good. They were associated with the Muses, and were attendants of Aphrodite. They lived on Mount Olympus, where they would host gatherings to entertain the Olympian gods and goddesses, singing and dancing to Apollo’s lyre.

The names of the Graces vary from source to source, as do the qualities that they represented. Commonly, they are known as Aglaea (Beauty/Splendour/Brightness/Elegance), Euphrosyne (Good Cheer/Mirth/Joyfulness) and Thalia (Youth/Beauty/Bloom/Festivities).

Whatever their particular identities, the sisters were always depicted together, and they became iconic symbols of joie de vivre and beauty. The Graces proved particularly inspirational to artists. The traveller Pausanias (AD c. 110 – c. 180) tells us that the sisters were originally depicted as clothed, but by his time of writing artists tended to depict them as naked.

During the Renaissance, Raphael followed this tradition in his painting Three Graces (c. 1503–1505):

Botticelli, however, draped the Graces in his work Primavera (Spring), dating to the late 1470s or early 1480s:

This painting, along with Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, is one of the most famous in the world. Given that the Graces were closely linked to the Muses and were believed to infuse artists and writers with the creative spirit, we can assume Botticelli was blessed by the three sisters when he set brush to canvas. Certainly, he seems to have been filled with divine inspiration.