page_title: Vestal Virgin Tuccia (Corradini sculpture)
section_title: Description and history
hierarchical_section_title: Vestal Virgin Tuccia (Corradini sculpture) / Description and history
caption_attribution_description: English: CP Lindemann, engraver (after Antonio Corradini). From a catalogue of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden edited by Baron Raymond Le Plat. 1733.
context_page_description: The Vestal Virgin Tuccia or Veiled Woman is a larger-than-life 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.
context_section_description: Corradini's subject is Tuccia, an ancient Roman Vestal Virgin who was wrongly accused of being unchaste. She proved her innocence by miraculously carrying water in a sieve from the Tiber River to the Temple of Vesta without spilling a drop. In Corradini's depiction, she holds the sieve on her left hip.
  The artist began working on Tuccia shortly after he arrived in Rome from Vienna. He must have been aware of the significance of Tuccia and Vestals to the city. In antiquity, a Vestal's virginity ensured the smooth functioning of the Roman Republic. If a Vestal were sexually active, her impure state actually posed a threat to the Republic, which is why unchaste Vestals were buried alive.
  This effort was not the first time Corradini addressed the subject. In 1724 he sculpted a bust of a Vestal which today is a part of the collection of the Skulpturensammlung in Dresden. A 1733 portfolio of engravings illustrating sculptures in Dresden's Skulpturensammlung collection includes a picture of a veiled Tuccia, presumably by Corradini.
  The completed sculpture was displayed in Corradini's studio near the Palazzo Barberini. There, it gained a good measure of notoriety and fame. The Jacobite pretender to the English throne, James Stuart, and Pope Benedict XIV both visited the studio to view the veiled Tuccia.
  The work was never sold. When Corradini moved to Naples to begin work on the Cappella Sansevero, Tuccia remained at the Palazzo Barberini where it can be found today. Corradini's friend, the painter and caricaturist Pier Leone Ghezzi, offered an explanation: "the Roman lords" did not approve "out of envy".
caption: Engraving of a veiled Tuccia (1732) attributed to Corradini
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