These two magnificent paintings share a distinguished provenance. Among others, they belonged to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, Queen Christina of Sweden first in Stockholm and then in Rome, and the Duke of Orléans in Paris. With the sale of the duke’s collection at the time of the French Revolution, the two canvases were acquired by the merchant banker Thomas Hope, who kept them in England until his heirs sold them to Henry Clay Frick in 1912.

Among the Frick’s largest paintings, they are usually grouped with two other allegorical paintings by Veronese that were also in Rudolf II’s collection. One is at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The paintings are roughly the same size and are similar in other ways but they differ in many technical details. It is possible that they were not originally painted as a pair.

On the left is a scene based on a subject often represented in the Renaissance—the choice of Hercules between Vice and Virtue. Vice, whose face we cannot see, is on the left, wearing a dress unfastened at the back. Her hair is crowned with cyclamen flowers, which were used to concoct poisonous love potions. She holds a deck of cards, signifying the variable fortunes of a dissolute life. With sharp claws, she has just ripped part of the man’s stockings, laying bare his bleeding flesh. Visible to the viewer, but not to the man in the painting, is the statue of a sphynx, which, along with a butcher’s knife, symbolizes danger.

The man has already chosen to abandon himself to Virtue, who is somberly dressed and crowned with laurel. While the iconography of the canvas is clear, the identity of the main protagonist, dressed in white, remains elusive. He wears contemporary garments, and his features suggest this is a portrait. The inscription at the top left reads “Honor and virtue flourish after death.” This could be a posthumous portrait of a Venetian aristocrat celebrated for turning his back on vice to lead a virtuous, though short-lived, existence.

The figures on the right are derived from classical mythology. Hercules, barely covered in lion’s pelt, represents strength; the small winged child at the bottom, Cupid, signifies love; the towering female figure with the sun shining on her forehead can be identified as Divine Wisdom. At her feet are jewels and crowns, coins and military banners. Her right foot rests on a globe.

The inscription “omnia vanitas” at the lower left—which translates to “All is Vanity”—is a quote from the Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, which stresses the supremacy of divine wisdom over worldly things. Divine Wisdom, therefore, stands and triumphs over strength, love, power, and the riches of the world.

With such messages, these powerful images would have been particularly appropriate for a ruling patron.