Time Reveals the Truth. The Allegory

Time Reveals the Truth was a standard allegorical subject — drawn from the Latin adage Veritas filia Temporis (Truth is the daughter of Time) — that depicted Father Time drawing back a veil or curtain to expose a female figure of Truth. The allegory carried political as well as philosophical resonance: it was used to argue that the passage of time would vindicate a cause, expose fraud, or confirm virtue against slander. Van Thulden's 1657 canvas, held by the Hermitage Museum, belongs to a distinguished category of Flemish allegorical painting exported to Russia through the imperial collecting system. The Hermitage's Flemish holdings are among the world's finest, and Van Thulden's work appears there alongside Rubens, van Dyck, and Jordaens. The subject allowed Van Thulden to paint one of his most complex multi-figure allegories: Time as a winged old man, Truth as an idealised nude or near-nude female figure, and perhaps subsidiary figures of Calumny or Envy being exposed.

The composition's central action — Time lifting the veil from Truth — generates the narrative tension. Van Thulden likely positions Time above or behind Truth, his gesture of revelation making him simultaneously the agent and the framing device for the revealed figure. The contrast between the aged, winged Time and the luminous, youthful Truth is a deliberate pictorial antithesis: wisdom and beauty, antiquity and freshness, process and revelation.