Allegory of Chastity

Allegory of Chastity is an oil-on-panel painting by Lorenzo Lotto, dated to about 1505 and now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. At its centre, a barefoot young woman in a white tunic and golden mantle rests gently against the stump of a laurel, a pose that suggests Daphne. Her calm expression conveys a watchful, purified stillness rather than the oblivion of sleep. Above her, a putto pours a cascade of white blossoms over her, perhaps a nod to Petrarch's poetry. On either side, two satyrs, a smiling female peeking from behind a tree and a male lounging by a pool with a glass flask, stand for the snares of carnal love and drunkenness, and she pays them no heed. The wooded landscape, bathed in sunset glow, recalls both Giorgione and Dürer's watercolours. X-rays reveal an earlier underdrawing for a different image, probably Hercules at the Crossroads, suggesting the composition changed during work. The panel is thought to have served as a cover for a portrait, and its date rests on its similarity to another Lotto cover, made for a portrait of Bernardo de' Rossi. It shows the young Lotto's inventiveness and wit while he was protégé of that bishop.

Painter

Lorenzo Lotto

Date

1505

Medium

oil paint, panel

Dimensions

43 × 34 cm

Museum

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Movement

High Renaissance, Venetian school

Genre

allegory

Depicts

satyr, landscape painting, putto, woman

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