Vestal Virgin - Vestals in Western Art

Vestals in Western Art

The Vestals were used as models of female virtue in allegorizing portraiture of the later West. Elizabeth I of England was portrayed holding a sieve to evoke Tuccia, the Vestal who proved her virtue by carrying water in a sieve. Tuccia herself had been a subject for artists such as Jacopo del Sellaio (d. 1493) and Joannes Stradanus, and women who were arts patrons started having themselves painted as Vestals. In the libertine environment of 18th century France, portraits of women as Vestals seem intended as fantasies of virtue infused with ironic eroticism. The discovery of a "House of the Vestals" in Pompeii made the Vestals a popular subject in the 18th century and the 19th century.

• Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (1583) by Quentin Metsys the Younger

• Vestal Virgin (1677–1730) by Jean Raoux

• Madame Henriette de France as a Vestal Virgin (1749) by Jean-Marc Nattier

• Portrait of a Woman as a Vestal Virgin (1770s) by Angelica Kauffmann

• 19th-century engraving by Frederick Leighton