Antwerp School, 16th century

Private collection, France;

Paris, Sotheby's, 26 June 2019, lot 14;

Where acquired post sale by the present collector.

In the present work the opposing forces of virtue and vice fight against each other. Virtue, nude apart from a small pink cloth, reclines at the base of a tree. She lounges in a contemplative pose, resting her head on one hand as she looks serenely past the viewer. Surrounding her are hybrid depictions of vice: Boschian in nature, they contort their monkey- and lion-like limbs. She remains nonplussed by their presence, her calmness the antithesis of their eagerness. In typical allegorical representations of the subject, the viewer is presented with a clear choice of virtue or vice. For instance, in Albrecht Durer's Hercules at a Crossroad, Virtue wields a club and helps Hercules defeat the temptations of vice and pleasure. The present work, however, does not elicit such a sense of choice, rather it exhibits virtue’s restraint against the power of vice.