Figures in a Spring Landscape (Sacred Grove)

This painting has at one and the same time associations with the theme of the Three Graces and an age-old game played to discover the name of one’s destined other half. The young maidens are using flowers and wreaths to foretell the future, summoning love and informing nature and the world that they are ready to meet their soulmate. Mythological and folk motifs are tightly intertwined in this work. The girls dressed in white are an embodiment of spring itself; one of them appears to be writing the name of her future husband on the trunk of a tree, but it turns out to be the artist’s own signature. Has her choice fallen upon Maurice Denis?
In the background we can see a pair of deer. As in the garden of paradise, they approach people without fear. The girls will not hurt them. These creatures serve as an allegory of hearing since the girls have come to the grove to communicate with the nymphs and goddesses. Diana herself, whose sacred animal is the deer, should give her blessing to young love and confirm the choice that is made.