A nude woman, pudgy child, and two satyrs, which have men’s heads and torsos with goat’s legs and horns, are in a landscape in this octagonal painting. The scene is divided in half by a tree stump which only reaches to the center of the composition. To the left of the stump, the pale-skinned, nude child stands and hunches over to draw on the ground with a V-shaped compass. Two pieces of paper and a violin lie nearby. The landscape behind him has a body of water leading back to a town with buildings streaked with peach, perhaps flames. A band of peach sky separates the blue silhouettes of mountains lining the horizon from the vivid blue sky above. At the bottom center of the painting, a shield with an oval horizontally striped with red and white leans on the boy’s side of the tree, which has one leafy branch growing on the left side. One satyr holds a jug and kneels close to the tree with his back to it as he looks back over one shoulder. He and the other satyr both have dark, peach-toned skin and full beards. The second satyr hovers to the right of the nude, sleeping woman, both hands reaching for her or the rose-pink cloth surrounding her. The woman has blond curls, a round face, and she sleeps with one hand resting across her belly and her head tipped to our left. The trio are on a grassy area enclosed by dense, dark-green bushes and trees.
Read the visual description

A nude woman, pudgy child, and two satyrs, which have men’s heads and torsos with goat’s legs and horns, are in a landscape in this octagonal painting. The scene is divided in half by a tree stump which only reaches to the center of the composition. To the left of the stump, the pale-skinned, nude child stands and hunches over to draw on the ground with a V-shaped compass. Two pieces of paper and a violin lie nearby. The landscape behind him has a body of water leading back to a town with buildings streaked with peach, perhaps flames. A band of peach sky separates the blue silhouettes of mountains lining the horizon from the vivid blue sky above. At the bottom center of the painting, a shield with an oval horizontally striped with red and white leans on the boy’s side of the tree, which has one leafy branch growing on the left side. One satyr holds a jug and kneels close to the tree with his back to it as he looks back over one shoulder. He and the other satyr both have dark, peach-toned skin and full beards. The second satyr hovers to the right of the nude, sleeping woman, both hands reaching for her or the rose-pink cloth surrounding her. The woman has blond curls, a round face, and she sleeps with one hand resting across her belly and her head tipped to our left. The trio are on a grassy area enclosed by dense, dark-green bushes and trees.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Allegory

Pietro degli Ingannati

Date
c. 1515-1525
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
overall: 43 x 39.2 cm (16 15/16 x 15 7/16 in.) framed: 63.5 x 59.1 x 6.4 cm (25 x 23 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1948.17.1
Credit line
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. G. H. Alexander Clowes
Time span
1501 to 1550
Department
CIS-R

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Venetian
  • emotion
  • allegory
  • Renaissance
  • Italian Paintings of the Sixteenth Century
  • Love
Provenance

Possibly Fletcher family, Asolo, Italy, 18th century. Probably purchased in Italy by Sigmund Pollak, by 1936; sold 1941 to his brother-in-law, Felix Laurence, New York;[1] sold to Dr. and Mrs. George H. Alexander Clowes, Dover, Massachusetts; gift 1948 to NGA. [1] A notorized affidavit from Felix Laurence provided to Clowes at the time of his purchase from Laurence recounts the provenance of the painting from Pollak (copy in NGA curatorial files).

NGA object ID 35082. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.