Allegory of Virtue and Vice

Executed in 1505 by Lorenzo Lotto, this oil-on-panel painting originally functioned as a protective sliding cover for the Portrait of Bernardo de' Rossi, Bishop of Treviso. The work bears the bishop's coat of arms and likely traveled with him to Parma in 1524 following his flight from Treviso, subsequently entering the Farnese collection. By 1803, the panel was sold separately to an antiquarian, later appearing in the possession of Giacomo Gritti in Bergamo around 1880.

It was auctioned at Sotheby's in London on May 9, 1934, where Martin Asscher purchased it. Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi briefly reacquired the piece before selling it to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1935. The foundation donated the work to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1939.

The Allegory of Virtue and Vice, painted by Lorenzo Lotto in 1505, is housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it is part of the Samuel H. Kress Collection (accession as a Kress donation). Its provenance traces a route from Bishop Bernardo de’ Rossi’s household in Treviso, through Parma’s Farnese collection, a 1803 antiquarian sale, ownership by Giacomo Gritti and Martin Asscher, a 1934 Sotheby’s auction in London, and finally acquisition by the Kress Foundation in 1935; the work was donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1939. Since entering the museum, it has been exhibited in the Kress Collection galleries and in several NGA presentations of Italian Renaissance art.

Lorenzo Lotto's Allegory of Virtue and Vice (1505) is situated within his early career under the patronage of Bishop Bernardo de' Rossi of Treviso, for whom it functioned as the protective sliding cover of a portrait. The work belongs to a tradition of allegorical pairings in Renaissance portraiture, comparable to Lotto's later Portrait of a Lady with its sliding cover of the Allegory of Chastity, in which the painted lid visually amplifies the sitter's moral and aspirational qualities. Scholars have traced the compositional device of a bifurcated tree separating two moralized landscapes to Albrecht Dürer's engraving Hercules at the Crossroads, though Lotto adapted the iconography with notable freedom, foreshadowing his lifelong interest in emblems and hidden meanings embedded within portraits.

The atmospheric handling of the contrasting landscapes, one luminous and serene, the other tempestuous and dark, has invited comparisons with Giorgione's Tempesta, which some scholars date to the same year. The panel entered the Samuel H. Kress Collection in 1935 and was donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1939, where it remains a touchstone for studies of Lotto's allegorical practice.

Created in 1505 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto, Allegory of Virtue and Vice is an oil on panel painting. This work is presently held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, United States. It exemplifies Lotto's early period, showcasing his engagement with complex allegorical themes through a traditional medium.