A set of four impressive carved white marble figures representing the Four Seasons possibly 17th century

The representation of the seasons maintained a remarkable degree of continuity from late antiquity through to the 20th Century.

In Pompeian and Roman frescoes and mosaics Spring is a young woman holding flowers; Summer has a sickle and a sheaf of corn; Autumn, grapes and vine leaves and Winter is thickly clad against the cold.

The Renaissance revived the antique tradition of representing the seasons by pagan divinities; Flora or Venus for Spring; Ceres for Summer; Bacchus for Autumn and Boreas or Vulcan for Winter which all stand alone as individual figures as well as a group. In pictorial form, the seasons were popular with 18th Century French painters of fetes galantes.

In sculptural form, the representation of the seasons with all its attendant iconography reached its apotheosis in the 17th century with a number of sets and individual figures carved by, amongst others, Francois Girardon and Philippe Magnier for the newly landscaped gardens at Versailles.