Prudence

Around 1490 Giovanni Bellini was the most sought-after religious painter in Venice, the man cities asked for altarpieces. For once he made something private and strange. This small panel, barely a foot tall, is one of four little allegories that once decorated a restello, a Venetian wall rack fitted with a mirror where a household kept combs and brushes. It belonged to Vincenzo Catena, a younger painter who followed Bellini's style. The nude woman here holds up a convex mirror from a stone pedestal. She is usually called Prudence, though some read her instead as Vanity, and honestly scholars have never settled what the group means. What makes the mirror odd is that the cabinet it hung on carried a real one, so a painted reflection sat next to a working glass. The four panels came down to us at all because Catena, in his will, left the cabinet to a friend named Antonio Marsili.