Description
The virtue of temperance is personified by a young woman, in over half-length, pouring liquid from one gilt tazza into another. Her sparsely draped figure is seen from the back, in three-quarters view to the right. Her hair is brought around her head in two plaits knotted at the central part. She casts a shadow against a niche imitating jasper, flecked with glazes of dark red, blue and yellow.
The iconography of this piece as well as Walters 44.188 is decidedly Italian, not French. It is to be related to the practice of High Renaissance Italian sculptors of placing the cardinal virtues in the niches of tombs, a practice followed in France (cf. E. Panofsky, "Tomb Sculpture," New York, 1964, pp. 74 f.).
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