Scenes from the Story of Virginia
Filippino Lippi (1457-1504) · c. 1475-1500
Three episodes of a Roman story run across this long panel. At one end Appius Claudius, one of the decemvirs who ruled Rome, has the young Virginia seized in the street; in the centre, on his tribunal, he condemns her to slavery; and at the other end her father Virginius stabs her to death rather than let her be dishonoured. The scenes unfold in front of classical buildings, with small, lively figures in Florentine dress of the late fifteenth century.
The panel was made in Florence in the last quarter of the fifteenth century and is attributed to Filippino Lippi, the pupil of Botticelli. A companion of the same size showing the story of Lucretia is in the Pitti Palace in Florence. Both were long thought to be the painted fronts of two marriage chests, but the museum suggests they may rather have decorated the walls of a room in a palace, since their subjects, two Roman women whose deaths led to the overthrow of tyrants, carried a political message about liberty. The panel came from the Campana collection, bought in eighteen sixty one, and entered the Louvre in eighteen sixty three.
Did You Know? The panel was sold to France as a Botticelli and catalogued two years later as anonymous Florentine, before scholars settled on Botticelli's pupil Filippino Lippi.
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