Ruskin was here referring to the Return from the Harvest (oil on panel, 122 x 195 cm). Painted by Rubens in about 1635, it entered the collections of the Dukes of Tuscany, and was hung in the Pitti Palace, Florence. Though temporarily removed to Paris by Napoleon's troops in 1799, it was returned to the Pitti in 1815 (where it still hangs as No. 14). The other landscape by Rubens in the Pitti is Ulysses and Nausicaa (No. 9, oil on panel, 126.5 x 205.5 cm). (For further information on these two paintings, see Adler, Corpus Rubenianum, Part XVIII, Nos. 28 and 48.) Ruskin could have seen these paintings on trips to Florence during the early 1840s: in 1840, 1841 and again in 1845 (before the third edition, the first in which Return from the Harvest is mentioned). Cook and Wedderburn quote from a note on the Return from the Harvest 'in one of the MS. books filled with Ruskin's account of pictures seen at Florence in 1845' ( Works .3.187).
Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640
Return from the Fields c.1636
on wood, 122x195cm
Collection: Pitti Palace, Florence
For a reproduction of this artistic work, please consult: Rossi, Filippo, The Uffizi and Pitti, (Thames and Hudson, 1966), p.232