Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue

completed 1502

Tempera on canvas, 160 × 192 cm · Louvre, Paris

Made for Isabella d’Este’s studiolo in Mantua, a small private study she filled with paintings on moral themes. Mantegna’s crowded allegory shows Minerva clearing a garden of grotesque Vices.

One of five canvases for the room; it hung opposite Mantegna’s Parnassus.
Look for the Vices in flight, among them armless Sloth and Ignorance carried by Ingratitude.
Hidden images: a tree in human form and a face in a cloud.
Inscriptions in several alphabets label the figures.
Later owned by Cardinal Richelieu; entered the French state collections in 1801.

As goddess of wisdom, Minerva was a natural champion of virtue over vice. Here the myth is used as a moral lesson rather than a story.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain