The Virtues | danosullivan

THE SEVEN VIRTUES

For P.T. Geach (1916 - 2013)

What I was aiming for in these seven still life paintings about the Virtues was a sense of crisis threatening, of conflict, of occluded meanings, and of patterns that don’t quite emerge. I thought that Allegory, with its various levels of reference, and Still Life with its roots partly in the devotional symbolism of 17th century Dutch genre painting , might lend themselves to this effort.

Being virtuous is an acquired power, then a habit, to act in the right way. You acquire it by imitation and practice. It has four key components, called the cardinal virtues, that relate to the different faculties of the soul. They must all be present in a virtuous person.

The Virtues make their appearance in Western art in the early middle ages as female figures struggling with other female figures who personify the Vices in a battle for the soul, a Psychomachia, the title of Prudentius’ allegorical poem, which served as an inspiration for much of this art. At first the figures were distinguished from each other simply by labels. Gradually, objects or accessories were included with the figures to specify them—for example, the scales or a book with Justice.

I was considering this rather daunting traditional approach when something more indirect occurred to me. Why not represent a preparatory scene? Have the accessory objects assembled on a bench in front of the painting ready to serve as models. One could even show the personified Virtues and Vices about to become representations on the canvas. When I begin a painting, I make preliminary drawings of the more demanding elements. Then I transfer tracings of them onto the canvas with carbon paper. So the traced drawings can carry these overtones of potentiality both in terms of what they are going to become and where they are going to take place. It seemed a plausible and unforced approach to allegory.