Allegory of Chastity

A winged cupid drops a stream of white flowers onto a maiden who rests against a cut tree trunk, while a female satyr peeks from behind a tree and a male satyr cradles his wine jug below — the chaste maiden above, the satyr pair beneath, an allegory of the choice between virtue and pleasure. Lorenzo Lotto painted this small panel about 1505, and it is closely related to his signed Allegory of Virtue and Vice of the same year, which served as the cover of a portrait of Bernardo de’ Rossi, bishop of Treviso; the Allegory of Chastity probably fulfilled the same office for another portrait, letting the painter expand upon a facet of the sitter’s character. Long shown under the titles A Maiden’s Dream and Sacred and Profane Love, the panel was in the Castelbarco collection in Milan and was sold in 1887 to Sir William Martin Conway as a work by Hans Rottenhammer before entering the National Gallery of Art in 1939 with the Samuel H. Kress Collection. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.