Veronese at The Frick Collection

The two monumental allegories by Paolo Veronese have been the focal point of the West Gallery here at the Frick Collection since Henry Clay Frick bought them in 1912. They came from some of the most prominent collections of European history. Their provenance is extraordinary. They first appeared in the 17th century in the collection of Emperor Rudolf II in the castle of Prague. They then belonged to Queen Christine of Sweden in Stockholm and in Rome. They went through several Roman families, including the Odescalchi family, finally to reach the Duc d'Orléans collection at the Palais Royal in Paris and then the collection of Thomas Hope in England. They traveled from Prague to Sweden to Rome to Paris to London before arriving here in New York in 1912. Mr. Frick designed the West Gallery to some degree to house these two huge paintings and they've been on the end walls of the gallery ever since the gallery was built. Paolo Veronese was one of the most important and famous Italian Renaissance artists working in Venice and he really invented the type of large-scale allegorical painting such as these. These are amongst the most beautiful examples of allegories by Veronese and by far the most beautiful of his paintings in the United States. We don't know who they were painted for and we don't know exactly when they were painted, but we know they appear in a list of pictures offered for sale in 1567 and they were probably painted a few years earlier around 1565. They both represent allegorical subjects dealing with allegorical figures and mythological figures and mythological events with a moral undertone. The choice between virtue and vice represents a young man, probably a portrait of the man who commissioned the painting, choosing between two beautiful women. On the left is vice, on the right is virtue. He's embracing virtue while vice has just attacked him and you can see his stocking ripped and his calf bleeding. At top left of the picture a Latin inscription reads, honour and virtue flourish after death, suggesting that the choice of a virtuous life will lead to rewards in the afterlife. The other painting instead represents a towering female figure, an allegorical figure of divine wisdom, recognizable by the sun placed above her forehead. She stands over all the objects to do with earthly power, trampling over the wealth of the world, over the royal crowns, over coins, over banners, over scepters. Next to her is Hercules, the mythical figure from antiquity, in this case representing brute force and strength, and at the bottom of the picture is a little cupid representing love. Next to her is another inscription in Latin from the Bible which reads, omnia vanitas, all is vanity. This comes from the book of Ecclesiastes which reads, vanity of vanities says the preacher, all is vanity. Now the messages of these two pictures were no doubt linked to whoever commissioned them and the idea was to promote a virtuous and moral living amongst the people who commissioned them, the family, the individual who bought these paintings from Veronese. And of course there is a message behind them about leading your life following the examples of virtue, following the example of divine wisdom.