The Continence of Scipio. On the verso: Allegory on Nature

This picture has two faces. Karel van Mander painted it on a sheet of copper, a costly and perfectly smooth support that let a painter work as finely as a miniaturist, and he signed and dated the front in 1600. The front tells a story from ancient Rome. The general Scipio has just captured New Carthage in Spain, and among the prisoners is a young woman. When her family and her fiancé come to buy her freedom, he hands her back unharmed and asks nothing for it. Van Mander puts the couple in bright colour close to us and lets the ruins, the skirmishing horsemen and the far hills fade into blue-green. On the back is a quite different subject, an allegory in which Nature, wearing a crown of city walls, and Law, holding tablets of written rules, instruct a naked man.