Vestal Virgins sacrificing at an altar

Vestal Virgins were priestesses of the temple of Vesta, the Roman goddess of the fire that burns in the earth. One of their duties was to keep the altar fire in the temple burning perpetually. They were sworn to absolute chastity, and breaking this vow was punished with burial alive. De Wit seems to have only rarely depicted this subject. A. Staring, Jacob de Wit 1695-1754, Amsterdam, 1958, pp. 151 and 153, mentions studies for chimney pieces of Vestal Virgins done for Teodor van Snakenburgh in Leiden in 1739 (now in the Städel'sches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt) and commissioned by Dionys Muilman in 1745 (now in the Lugt Collection, Institut Néerlandais, Paris).
A.P. de Mirimonde, Les vestales par Jacob de Wit, Oud Holland, LXXIII, II, 1958, pp. 114-116 also published a picture of this subject dated 1749, now in the Montauban museum (Dutch Masterpieces from the eighteenth Century, Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1971, no. 102, fig. 16).