Raphael, Three Graces, 1503

In history, the three attendants of goddesses - Euphrosyne, Thalia, and Aglaea, known as the three Graces - have been interpreted in various ways. Generally, they are considered to represent the three aspects of generosity: giving, receiving, and returning gifts; or the three phases of love: beauty, desire, and fulfillment; or the three virtues: faith, hope and charity, as the Church claimed; or the personification of chastity, beauty, and love. One thing for certain is since ancient Greece, the Three Graces are usually depicted in the same manner: the two outer figures facing the spectator and the central figure facing away.

Raphael painted this fairly small masterpiece (only 17cm by 17cm) when he was barely twenty. Many believe that the panel and another of his works, The Knight's Dream, together may have formed a single diptych. In The Knight's Dream, Scipio, the sleeping knight, must choose between Venus (pleasure) and Minerva (virtue); and the Three Graces reward his choice of virtue with the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.

The composition reflects the classical idea of symmetry and balance. The middle figure centers the panel vertically and the landscape in the background gives the work its horizontal. Each Grace connects the other two, while contemplating her own idealized, spherical apple, which forms a sense of geometrical beauty. Dominated by great harmony, the three nude women figures transmit a sense of classical beauty rather than a sexual temptation, as we often see in the work of his contemporaries, such as Botticelli and Michelangelo. It may be due to the fact that the Three Graces are not based on living models, but on the classical sculpture group in Siena. It may also be as the influence of his peaceful, intellectual, middle-class family background. Raphael's work may not be as passionate as Michelangelo, as lively as Botticelli, or as mysterious as Leonardo, but his calmness, pensiveness and orthodox intellectual style make him one of the greatest artists not only in Renaissance, but also throughout history.