Allegory of Vices

Around 1531 Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua and one of the great collectors of the age, was still filling her private study, the studiolo, with paintings on set themes. Correggio made this to hang there, an allegory of vice set opposite an allegory of virtue beside the door. To sit beside the older pictures already on those walls, by Mantegna, Perugino and Costa, he put aside his usual oils and worked in tempera, the flatter, quicker medium they had used. The central figure is bound and beset, tormented by satyr-like companions, the wages of a life given over to the senses. Isabella's study was later broken up, and the pair travelled north to Paris, where they hang today.