Allegory of Virtue and Vice

Around 1565 Veronese was the busiest decorator in Venice, painting ceilings and banquet scenes for the Republic, and this small canvas is one of his first real ventures into pure allegory. It tells the old story of Hercules at the crossroads, forced to choose between two women. Virtue, in plain green, pulls him up toward her; Vice, dressed in the finer blue and orange, has already torn his stocking and still reaches after him. The Latin cut into the stone above reads that honour and virtue flower after death. It went, with its companion piece, into the collection of Emperor Rudolf the Second in Prague before eventually reaching New York.