Portrait of Vittoria della Rovere as Tuccia

Tuccia was a Vestal in ancient Rome, accused of breaking her vow of chastity. She asked the goddess Vesta for proof, went down to the Tiber and carried water back to the temple in a sieve without spilling a drop. Pliny recorded the story, Petrarch put her into his Triumph of Chastity, and by the 16th century the sieve had become an emblem a woman could be painted holding. Elizabeth of England used it more than once in the 1580s. The Zeri catalogue places this picture between 1634 and 1640. In 1637, the middle of that span, the wedding of Vittoria della Rovere and Grand Duke Ferdinando the Second was celebrated in public, three years after they had been married privately, when she was 12. She is about 15 here, hair loose, against open sky. Her hand rests on the sieve, the one object in the picture that says who she is meant to be.