Veturia at the Feet of Coriolanus

The story comes from the early Roman republic. Coriolanus, driven out of Rome, marched back at the head of a Volscian army, and when the city's envoys and priests had failed it sent out his mother, Veturia, who knelt in front of him in his own camp. He called off the attack. Landi painted the scene in 1819, during the years he was president of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, the body that trained and judged most painters working in the city. The canvas then led a wandering official life. It is recorded in 1835 in the ducal palace at Lucca, from 1927 it hung in the Florentine Court of Appeal, and it only reached this gallery on 19 February 1971. Its measurements have never been published, by the museum or by anyone else.