Triumph of Chastity

Francesco di Giorgio's Triumph of Chastity, painted around 1460 and now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, depicts the allegorical victory of Chastity over Love, a subject drawn from Petrarch's Trionfi that was enormously popular in fifteenth-century Italian decorative painting. Such triumphal procession scenes, showing virtues and vices in Roman-style chariots, were favorite subjects for cassone and spalliera panels in wealthy Sienese and Florentine households.

Francesco di Giorgio's treatment features the elegant, attenuated figures and lyrical landscape settings characteristic of the Sienese school, with a processional composition that unfolds across the panel in a festive, decorative rhythm.