Allegory of Virtue and Vice

On a narrow strip of land between a stormy sea and a sky of piled cloud, a naked satyr leans over a golden urn of wine while, across a broken tree trunk, a child gathers the tools of study and virtue — a compass, a scroll, a set-square — beneath a small figure ascending a path toward the light. The two halves of the landscape itself are made to differ: to the left, the rocky ground of effort and discipline; to the right, the lush grass and the foundering ship of indulgence, so that the picture reads as a moral map of the choices facing the young. Lorenzo Lotto painted this allegory in 1505 for Bernardo de’ Rossi, Bishop of Treviso, whose coat-of-arms the panel bears, and the crisp, enameled handling and the fresh light of its landscape look forward to the great Venetian pastorals of the following generation. The panel entered the Samuel H. Kress Collection before its gift to the National Gallery of Art in 1939. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.