This 1760 marble work by French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (15 February 1704 – 1778) is located in the Louvre Museum and depicts both Pomona and Vertumnus.
The Museum's website (
visit link) informs us:
"Le groupe est mentionné en 1786 dans les jardins de la Folie Saint-James à Neuilly appartenant à Claude Baudard de Sainte-James, trésorier général de la Marine. Le sujet est tiré des Métamorphoses d'Ovide : le dieu des jardins Vertumne est amoureux de la belle Pomone qui résiste à tout galant ; pour l'approcher et la séduire, il prend l'apparence d'une vieille femme qui finalement révèle son vrai visage, ce que signifie ici le masque enlevé par le jeune homme.
La scène est un hommage rendu aux amours de Louis XV et de Madame de Pompadour ; celle-ci avait triomphé à Versailles dans le rôle de Pomone."
which Google translates as:
"The group is mentioned in 1786 in the gardens of the Folie Saint-James in Neuilly belonging to Claude Baudard of St. James, General Treasurer of the Navy. The subject is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the god of gardens Vertumne is in love with the beautiful Pomona resists any gallant to approach and seduce her, he takes the appearance of an old woman who finally reveals his true face, that means here the mask removed by the young man.
The scene is a tribute to the love of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour, it had triumphed in the role of Versailles in Pomona."
As for the asteroid, Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"32 Pomona is a stony main-belt asteroid that is 81 km across. It was discovered by German-French astronomer Hermann Mayer Salomon Goldschmidt on October 26, 1854, and is named after Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees.
Photometric observations of this asteroid gave a light curve with a synodic rotation period of 9.448 hours. The data was used to construct a model for the asteroid, revealing it to be an angular object that is spinning about a pole with ecliptic coordinates (ß, ?) = (+58°, 267°). The ratio of the major to minor axes' lengths is roughly equal to 1.3.
The spectrum of 32 Pomona matches an S-type in the Tholen classification system, and is similar to primitive achondrite meteorites. Measurements of the thermal inertia of 32 Pomona give a value of around 20–120 m–2 K–1 s–1/2, compared to 50 for lunar regolith and 400 for coarse sand in an atmosphere."