The Continence of Scipio

The Roman historian Livy tells the story. In 209 BC the young general Scipio took the city of New Carthage in Spain, and his soldiers brought him a captive of striking beauty. When he learned she was engaged to a local prince, Allucius, he gave her back untouched, and he handed the gold her parents had brought as ransom to the groom as a wedding present. Painters of the 16th century used the scene as a lesson in princely self-command.

Scipio sits at the left, pointing, and the bride stands in white on the right while a kneeling man offers a ewer from the ransom. Older catalogues gave the canvas to Primaticcio or to Toussaint Dubreuil before it settled on Niccolò dell'Abbate. In the 17th century it belonged to the duc de Liancourt and then to Louis Phélypeaux de La Vrillière, a secretary of state, and it later passed to the duc de Penthièvre, a grandson of Louis XIV. Revolutionary officials seized it in 1794 for the new museum at Tours, and it reached the Louvre around 1800.