This elegant panel was painted in Siena in the late 1460s by the famous Veronese painter and miniaturist Liberale da Verona, whose formative youth was spent in that city. The scene is based upon the Trionfo della Pudiccia (‘Triumph of Chastity’) by the great Italian poet Petrarch (1304–1374), itself a section of his long poem Trionfi (‘Triumphs’) dealing with Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, t.mes and Eternity. Chastity, personified by Laura, is enthroned upon a triumphal chariot drawn by two unicorns, symbols of purity – depicted here with thick leonine manes – in procession from Cythera to the Temple of Chastity in Rome. Her triumph is indicated by the presence of Cupid, the god of love, bound with wings held fast by two amorini, as her prisoner. Behind her chariot dance her sister Virtues and other popular chaste heroines, each bearing palm branches symbolic of victory, one of whom precedes the chariot and holds aloft a banner bearing an ermine, a symbol of purity. The girdle worn by another was symbolic of marital fidelity, and was traditionally given by a husband to his wife as a token at their marriage. Behind we see a rocky coastline, with two towns perched atop hills, while wonderfully stylised clouds scud across the sky, seeming to snag upon the trees.

This painting would undoubtedly have formed the front panel of a cassone or wedding chest, and formed part of the decoration of a Tuscan – presumably Sienese – house. The subject matter was particularly popular for this purpose, for Love and Chastity might thus be seen side by side as a moral example to the young bride. Cassone panels often featured processions such as this, thereby recalling the nuptial processions in which the chests themselves travelled with the bride to her husband’s home. Often produced in pairs, a pendant chest would very probably have depicted the Combat of Love and Chastity. Very unusually for a cassone, the painted surface of this colourful and delicately rendered panel is exceptionally well-preserved.

The composition of this painting is very similar to another panel of the same subject, last recorded with the Ehrich Galleries in New York, and sold in their sale, American Art Association, 20 November 1931, lot 51 (fig. 1).¹ Here, an as yet unbound Cupid sits astride a very similar chariot, also drawn by two unicorns and followed by a crowd of virtuous women. The girl bearing the standard is, however, now accompanied by a bearded male figure. Even from old photographs, it is evident that probably the figures and certainly the chariot, landscape and unicorns are by the same hand, and that both panels must surely have originated in the same workshop. For many years when in the collects ion of Lord Overstone, the Loyd panel was thought to be from Florence, the largest centre of production for such works in the fifteenth century. However, from the t.mes of the Burlington Replica Handbags s Club exhibition of 1904 onwards, this workshop was thought to be that of the Sienese painter, architect and sculptor, Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1502), which evidently produced many such chests, and that the design of the panel was his. This attribution was then taken up to a greater or lesser degree by a number of later scholars, among them Schubring, Brinton, Weller and particularly Bernard Berenson, who felt that the painting was in large part by Francesco himself. At the same t.mes , the ex-Ehrich panel was also exhibited in the 1920s as the work of Francesco.

More recent scholars, however, have turned away from this attribution, as the inflated group of cassoni associated with Francesco’s name has been reduced.² The majority follow the suggestion first put forward by Burton Frederiksen in 1969, that the panel might be connected to the early work of Francesco’s younger contemporary Liberale da Verona. Hans Joachim Eberhardt, Andrea de Marchi and most recently Laurence Kanter and Mattia Vinco all now fully support an attribution to Liberale. The nature of the relationship between the work of Francesco and the youthful Liberale’s early career in Siena remains a source of much discussion. Liberale seems to have worked in Siena for about a decade after 1466, and with his associate Girolamo da Cremona, supplied the illuminations for the choir books in the Duomo, which were to have great importance for Sienese painting.

Liberale was also active as a panel painter, and seems to have produced a number of fronts of marriage chests (cassoni). Mattia Vinco sees in the ex-Loyd panel a youthful work by Liberale painted in this phase in Siena around 1467–68, but reflecting the style of Sano di Pietro more than that of Francesco di Giorgio Martini. He thinks that the young illuminator may have been contracted to either Sano di Pietro’s or Francesco di Giorgio’s workshop (or both) before eventually becoming an independent painter in Siena. Hans-Joachim Eberhardt specifically compares the Wantage panel to Liberale's first illuminated choir books for the Duomo in Siena, one of which, Gradual 24.9, was paid for in November 1468, and the other, Gradual 20.5, is signed on one page and paid for in December 1470. The female figures in this panel, for example, can be closely compared to the winged angel in Liberale's miniature of The Vision of Castel Sant'Angelo in the latter, where the same facial type and distinctive clinging drapery forms are to be found (fig. 2).³ At the t.mes of the 2018 sale he kindly suggested that the ex-Loyd panel is more stylistically accomplished and mature than the ex-Ehrich cassone, which he thinks may also be an early Liberale from around 1467, while he dates the present work to around 1469.

Other scholars such as Christiansen, Strehlke and Kanter, think that this phase of Liberale’s career in Siena may also be seen, for example, in other cassone panels such as the Abduction of Europa in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (fig. 3), or that depicting the Story of Tobias sold, London, Christie’s, 6 July 2017, lot 17. The posture of the figures and their distinctive hairstyles and draperies all reflect Liberale’s possible association with Francesco di Giorgio and his workshop. The ex-Loyd panel, by contrast, is less indebted to Francesco; for Kanter it may even have been painted later, after Liberale’s return to his native Verona in 1476. Nevertheless, stylistic analogies with Liberale's miniatures would seem to connect this panel more to his Sienese milieu, at a point in the painter's career when he is described by Vinco as ‘perfectly set in the cultural climate of Siena’.⁴

Note on Provenance

Samuel Jones Loyd acquired this panel in 1874, at the sale of the important collects ion of the marchand amateur Alexander Barker (c. 1797–1874). Alongside important French furniture, glass and ceramics, Barker’s collects ion included a number of highly important fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian pictures, three of which were acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1861 and no less than thirteen more in the same auction at Christie’s. These included such masterpieces as Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, Piero della Francesca’s Nativity and Filippo Lippi’s Seven Saints. His cassoni were of similarly high quality, and included Botticelli’s four panels illustrating the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti from Boccaccio’s Decameron now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. It is quite possible that Lord Overstone had got to know Barker’s collects ion through his friendship with the National Gallery’s first director, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865).

¹ Present whereabouts unknown. Recorded in the Fondazione Zeri Archive (no. 17765) as ‘Anonymous Sienese 15th century’, with a record of an annotation from Zeri pointing out ‘points in common’ with the work of the Master of Stratonice (Michele Ciampanti); see Vinco 2018, pp. 89–90, no. 14.

² See, for example, L. Kanter, ‘Francesco di Giorgio’, in Painting in Renaissance Siena, exh. cat., New York 1988, pp. 294–97 and 317–18, for a discussion of the group of cassoni.

³ For which see, for example, C. Del Bravo, Liberale da Verona, Florence 1967, pp. xliv–xlv, reproduced.

⁴ Vinco 2018, p. 77: ‘appare altrettanto evidente come il pittore a quest'altezza cronologica sia già perfett.mes nte ambientato nella temperie culturale senese’.