Allegory of Chastity ("Maiden's Dream")

Introduction / The Early Years

Allegory of Chastity ("Maiden's Dream"), c. 1506
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection

Portrait of a Lady, 1505-1506
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Lotto painted Allegory of Chastity ("Maiden's Dream") as a sliding cover for the Portrait of a Lady. Few such covers survive, but this exhibition reunites two with their original portraits for the first time in nearly five hundred years. This cover associates the lady in the portrait with the virtue of chastity, symbolized by the gently reposing woman being showered with white blossoms. The lusty female satyr at left represents the opposing vice of carnal pleasure.