Chastity, also known as purity, is a virtue related to temperance. Someone who is chaste refrains either from sexual activity that is considered immoral or from any sexual activity, according to their state of life. In some contexts, for example when making a vow of chastity, chastity means celibacy.
Vesta is the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. She was rarely depicted in human form, and was more often represented by the fire of her temple in the Forum Romanum. Entry to her temple was permitted only to her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins. Their virginity was deemed essential to Rome's survival; if found guilty of inchastity, they were buried or entombed alive. As Vesta was considered a guardian of the Roman people, her festival, the Vestalia, was regarded as one of the most important Roman holidays. During the Vestalia privileged matrons walked barefoot through the city to the temple, where they presented food-offerings. Such was Vesta's importance to Roman religion that following the rise of Christianity, hers was one of the last non-Christian cults still active, until it was forcibly disbanded by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in AD 391.
RheaSilvia, also known as Ilia, was the mythical mother of the twins Romulus and Remus, who founded the city of Rome. This event was portrayed numerous times in Roman art Her story is told in the first book of Ab Urbe Condita Libri of Livy and in Cassius Dio's Roman History. The Legend of Rhea Silvia recounts how she was raped by Mars while she was a Vestal Virgin, resulting in the twins, as mentioned in the Aeneid and the works of Ovid.
In Roman mythology, Amulius was king of Alba Longa who ordered the death of his infant, twin grandnephews Romulus, the eventual founder and king of Rome, and Remus. He was deposed and killed by them after they survived and grew to adulthood.
Bona Dea was a goddess in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility among married Roman women, healing, and the protection of the state and people of Rome. According to Roman literary sources, she was brought from Magna Graecia at some time during the early or middle Republic, and was given her own state cult on the Aventine Hill.
In ancient Rome, the Vestal Virgins or Vestals were priestesses of Vesta, virgin goddess of Rome's sacred hearth and its flame.
In Roman legend, Tarpeia, daughter of the Roman commander Spurius Tarpeius, was a Vestal Virgin who betrayed the city of Rome to the Sabines at the time of their women's abduction for what she thought would be a reward of jewelry. She was instead crushed to death by Sabine shields and her body cast from the southern cliff of Rome's Capitoline Hill, thereafter called after her the Tarpeian Rock.
The Temple of Vesta, or the aedes, is an ancient edifice in Rome, Italy. It is located in the Roman Forum near the Regia and the House of the Vestal Virgins. The Temple of Vesta housed Vesta's holy fire, which was a symbol of Rome's safety and prosperity. The temple has a circular footprint, making it a tholos.
George Gower was an English portrait painter who became Serjeant Painter to Queen Elizabeth I in 1581.
Quentin Metsys the Younger was a Flemish Renaissance painter, one of several of his countrymen active as artists of the Tudor court in the reign of Elizabeth I of England. He was the son of Flemish painter Jan Massys, Matsys, or Metsys and the grandson and namesake of Quentin Massys or Metsys.
Louis Hector Leroux was a French painter in the academic style, affiliated by critics with the Néo-Grecs movement in art. He specialized in meticulously researched paintings of ancient Rome, especially depictions of women. He was best known for a series of some thirty paintings which spanned his entire career, depicting Vestal virgins. His daughter, Laura Leroux-Revault, was also a painter.
Venus Verticordia was an epithet of the Roman goddess Venus, alluding to the goddess' ability to change hearts from lust to chastity.
The Plimpton Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I is an oil painting by English painter George Gower dated 1579, and now in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. It is one of three near-identical portraits of Elizabeth I by Gower that represent the queen holding a symbolic sieve. It was acquired by George Arthur Plimpton in 1930, hence the name. His son, Francis T. P. Plimpton, willed it to the Folger.
Modesty or Chastity or Veiled Truth by Antonio Corradini is a sculpture completed in 1752 during the Rococo period. Corradini was commissioned by Raimondo di Sangro to sculpt a memorial for his mother in the Cappella Sansevero in Naples, where the marble sculpture still remains.
Exemplary Women of Antiquity is a set of paintings produced between 1495 and 1500 by Andrea Mantegna. They show the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba poisoning herself to avoid being paraded in a Roman triumph, the Roman Vestal Virgin Tuccia proving her chastity by carrying water in a sieve, Judith with the head of Holofernes and Dido holding Sychaeus's funeral urn. Infrared reflectography has uncovered a signature on the back of Judith reading And.a Mantegnia. P[inxit].. Sophonisba and Tuccia are egg-tempera on poplar panel, whilst Judith and Dido are glue-tempera on linen canvas.
The Vestal Virgin Tuccia or Veiled Woman is a marble sculpture created in 1743 by Antonio Corradini, a Venetian Rococo sculptor known for his illusory depictions of female allegorical figures covered with veils that reveal the fine details of the forms beneath. The work is housed in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
Licinia, a Roman Vestal Virgin. She known in history for the case against her for incest with her cousin Marcus Licinius Crassus, who allegedly attempted to frame her for breaking her vow of chastity in order to acquire her property.
The gens Tuccia was a minor plebeian family at ancient Rome. Only a few members of this gens are mentioned in history, of whom the most famous may be the Vestal Virgin Tuccia, who performed a miracle in order to prove her innocence.
The Veiled Vestal is an 1847 sculpture by Rafaelle Monti. It was commissioned by William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire during an 1846 trip to Naples. It is a representation of a Vestal Virgin, the priestesses of the Ancient Roman goddess Vesta. The subject was popular at this time due to the then recent discovery of the House of the Vestals in Pompeii. The depiction of translucent fabrics was popular at the time and Monti was requested to use the technique in this sculpture. Monti completed the sculpture in April 1847 and it was afterwards displayed at Cavendish's West London Chiswick House.
In Greek and Roman mythology, several goddesses are distinguished by their perpetual virginity. These goddesses included the Greek deities Hestia, Athena, and Artemis, along with their Roman equivalents, Vesta, Minerva, and Diana. In some instances, the inviolability of these goddesses was simply a detail of their mythology, while in other cases virginity was also associated with their worship and religious rites.
