Vestale

Girolamo di Benvenuto's Vestale (Vestal Virgin), painted around 1450 and now in the Louvre, is a rare secular subject from a Sienese painter better known for religious works — a depiction of a Roman Vestal Virgin, one of the priestesses who maintained the sacred flame of Vesta in ancient Rome as a symbol of the Roman state's continuity. The Vestal Virgins held a unique social position in ancient Rome, bound by strict vows of chastity and granted unusual legal privileges, and their depiction in Renaissance painting reflected the humanist culture's fascination with classical antiquity and its parallels with Christian religious life.

Tempera on panel. The Vestal is shown in a form derived from classical representation — the draped, dignified female figure whose identity is established through costume and attribute rather than landscape or narrative context.