Allegory of Wisdom and Strength

Follower of Paolo Veronese (Verona, 1528 – Venice, 1588) Allegory of Wisdom and Strength Oil on canvas, 48 x 36.5 cm Frame, 61 x 48 cm The Allegory of Wisdom and Strength is a painting made in 1565 in Venice by Paolo Veronese and currently preserved at the Frick Collection in New York. The Allegory of Wisdom and Strength and the Allegory of Virtue and Vice have shared the same history since their creation, passing through numerous owners and collections. Because of this, several scholars have hypothesized that Veronese painted the canvases as a pair. In 1970, Edgar Munhall was the first to suggest that they were simply completed at the same time, but that they were not a pendant. Studies conducted by experts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 2000s confirmed this thesis: scholars discovered that the artist used different materials for the support of each painting, adopted a different composition of motifs, and a different methodology in the elaboration of the sky. These discrepancies led scholars to believe that the paintings were conceived individually, as independent works from each other. Furthermore, the conclusion was supported by the visual analysis of the two canvases as a whole: it is clearly perceived that they do not complete each other, as would have been the case if it had been a pair of paintings). From its creation in Venice in the second half of the 16th century, this work has been owned by Emperor Rudolf II of Habsburg, Queen Christina of Sweden, the Odescalchi family; then it was part of the Orleans Collection of Philip II of Bourbon-Orléans and subsequently belonged to various English owners and art dealers, until it arrived at the Frick Collection in New York. The painting, of monumental dimensions, bears a subject of an allegorical nature: in fact, the personification of Wisdom is represented on the left and Hercules, who symbolizes Strength and earthly concerns on the right. The conflict between divine and mortal questions is a central theme of the work. In the scene, the virtuosity of divine Wisdom appears to triumph over the earthly desires of Hercules: in fact, the woman, whose gaze is turned towards the sky, is flooded with light and almost seems to be captured in a moment of elevation; on the contrary, the figure of Hercules, who looks down, in the direction of the jewels on the ground, tends to assume a descending position and is enveloped in a dark shadow. The allegorical genre is unusual both compared to Veronese's famous canvases with historical and biblical subjects, and in comparison with other less formal works by other Venetian Renaissance artists such as Giorgione or Titian. This work, together with the Allegory of Vice and Virtue, is believed to be among the first of its kind completed by Caliari. Various contemporary or slightly later copies of the painting exist, which testify to its enormous visual fortune in the Venetian context: the peculiarity and unusual nature of this iconography certainly catalyzed the attention of the ramified group of figures that moved around the painter Paolo Veronese, who was able to build a populated and industrious workshop around himself. The object is in good condition.