Justice; and Forbearance

The Sala di Costantino, Raphael's final Vatican commission, was left incomplete at the time of his death in 1520. The cycle honoring the victories of Emperor Constantine was resumed by the master's heirs, Giulio Romano and Giovanni Francesco Penni, under the auspices of Medici Pope Clement VII, who acceded to the papacy in 1523. According to Vasari in his thorough account of the hall in the life of Giulio Romano, '[Giulio and Penni] immediately threw down the wall prepared for the oils, leaving, however, two figures, which they had previously painted as a decoration about some popes, of Justice and another virtue' (G. Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, London, 1963, 3, p. 99). The two figures, uniquely executed in oil as opposed to fresco, are reproduced in the present pair, Justice immediately recognizable in the Renaissance through her accompanying scales and ostrich.