Allegorical Figure of a Woman in a Landscape Holding a Spear and a Cornucopia

Carpaccio's Allegorical Figure of a Woman in a Landscape from around 1496 deploys the visual language of classical allegory—personification with attributes—in the atmospheric Venetian landscape setting he had developed for his narrative cycles. The woman bearing a spear and cornucopia is likely a personification of Fortune, Victory, or a combination of virtues that Renaissance iconographic programs associated with these attributes. Allegorical figure paintings required painters to translate abstract concepts into legible visual form, combining the observation of the natural and human world with the systematic symbolic vocabulary developed by humanist scholars. Carpaccio's version demonstrates his ability to integrate the kind of outdoor landscape observation his narrative cycles contained within the more concentrated format of a single allegorical figure, and his continued engagement with secular subjects alongside his ecclesiastical commissions.

The allegorical figure is set within a detailed landscape, rendered with Carpaccio's characteristic clarity of color and precise descriptive technique.