Allegory of Virtue and Vice
Lorenzo Lotto·1505
Historical Context
Lotto's Allegory of Virtue and Vice from 1505 is the companion to his Allegory of Chastity, together forming a didactic program about moral choice. The allegorical panel format — symbolic landscape populated with figures and objects carrying specific symbolic meanings — was a vehicle for learned humanist content that Lotto adapted from earlier Flemish and Italian traditions. His early patrons required not just beautiful paintings but visually sophisticated programs that could be read like texts, the painter's role including not just technical execution but the translation of intellectual content into visual form. These early allegories show Lotto as a painter thoroughly embedded in the humanist culture of his moment.
Technical Analysis
Lotto's oil on panel demonstrates his early mastery of symbolic composition with vivid, clearly defined forms, bright color, and the precise rendering of allegorical attributes that make the moral message legible.
Provenance
Bernardo de' Rossi, Bishop of Treviso from 1505 until 1510.[1] Probably Palazzo Farnese, Parma. Antonio Bertioli, Parma, by 1791 until at least 1803. Giacomo Gritti, Bergamo, by c. 1880. (sale, Sotheby's, London, 9 May 1934, no. 129); purchased by Martin Asscher, London.[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence and Rome); sold 1935 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; [3] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] The painting bears his coat-of-arms. [2] According to Kress records in NGA curatorial files. [3] According to Fern Rusk Shapley, _Catalogue of the Italian Paintings_, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:278. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/199.
