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.
Wisdom and Strength
All the splendor of Venetian color and light, of the Venetians’ pleasure in beautiful landscapes, skies, and people, in lustrous silks and jewels, are brought together in the Frick’s two large canvases by Veronese, Allegory of Wisdom and Strengthand Allegory of Virtue and Vice (The Choice of Hercules). Yet in spite of their fame and the series of prominent collectors who owned them, many uncertainties persist about their dates, provenance, and subject matter. Few of Veronese’s works are firmly dated, and the evolution of his style is not easily traceable. The Frick paintings appear to be fairly late works, but probably not much later than 1580.
It has been proposed that the two were commissioned by the Emperor Rudolph II, but although the paintings certainly belonged to the Emperor, there is no firm evidence that Rudolph, an avid collector, actually commissioned them. It is also customarily assumed that the two pictures are pendants — chiefly because they have been together throughout their recorded history, not because of any close compositional or iconographic ties; the differences in the scale of the figures and in the types of canvas employed suggest that they may in fact not have been pendants, and the moralizing subjects of the pair are in no way interdependent.
Veronese expressed the moralizing theme of Wisdom and Strength in sumptuous fashion. The female figure gazing heavenward seems intended to represent Divine Wisdom. Hercules, his gaze turned instead downward, to the riches strewn over the ground, would appear here to symbolize worldly or physical power. The inscription OMNIA VANITAS (All is Vanity) at lower left is the keynote of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which stresses the supremacy of divine wisdom over worldly things and the labors that produce them.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Emperor Rudolph II. Queen Christina of Sweden, Stockholm and Rome. Bequeathed by her in 1689 to Cardinal Decio Azzolini, Rome. Marchese Pompeo Azzolini, Rome. Sold by him in 1696 to Prince Livio Odescalchi. Marchese Baldassare Odescalchi and Cardinal Erba Odescalchi (1713). Sold by them in 1721 to the Duc d’Orléans. Orléans family. Sold to Walkeurs in 1792. Sold by him in 1792 to Laborde-Méréville. Duke of Bridgewater and Lords Gower and Carlisle. Thomas Hope (1799–1800). The Hope family. Sold by the trustees of the Hope family to Agnew. Knoedler (1910). Frick, 1912.
Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: French, Italian and Spanish. Volume II. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.
