The Continence of Scipio

In 209 BC the young Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio took New Carthage, the Carthaginian stronghold in Spain that is now Cartagena. According to the historian Livy, his soldiers brought him a captive girl of striking beauty. Scipio learned that she was engaged to a young Celtiberian chief called Allucius, sent for him and gave her back untouched. When her parents arrived with gold to ransom her, he handed it to the couple as a wedding present.

Renaissance patrons used the story as a model of self-command in a man with power over others. This version was painted on the outside of a house in Verona, the palazzo Cattanei, in a city where many house fronts were covered with painted scenes. The museum gives it to Girolamo Mocetto, a Venetian painter, and hangs it beside its companion from the same front, the Justice of Trajan. Both were taken off the wall and brought indoors.