The Choice Between Virtue and Vice

A richly dressed young man - Hercules at the crossroads of his life - lunges away from Vice, a seductive woman who claws at him, toward the stern, protective figure of Virtue, gashing his leg on the thorns of the harder path as he goes. Veronese spins the ancient moral fable into shimmering silks and Venetian color. It is one of a pair, almost certainly painted for Emperor Rudolf II; its pendant, Wisdom and Strength, is also in this collection. An inscription spells out the lesson: honor and virtue are reached only through hardship.