Vice and Virtue (Aldomen or Happiness in the Dark, 1794)
Description
The two figures on the back, embodying the readers, have two allegories facing them, each urging them to take a different path, one leading to a city cut to the bone - symbolizing the rationality of the Enlightenment and its corruption - that clouds threaten; and the other leading to a nurturing nature that offers "kindly virtues and sweetest pleasures". The allegory on the left wears clothes and treasures with corrupting power: it has large wings reminiscent of those of the fallen angel, and a flame on its forehead, representing the Enlightenment. The second allegory, lifted by the cloud and illuminated by the sun, signifies a less flashy but Heaven-chosen radiance: she embodies an abundant and fertile nature, in the image of the nurturing Venus described by Lucretius.
1. Caption below image: "Nature in her Breast offered to their desires | the amiable virtues and the sweetest pleasures".
3. The image repeats the model of Hercules' choice often taken up in iconographic tradition. Sade may have been inspired by the same model when commissioning the engraving that serves as the frontispiece to La Nouvelle Justine and L'Histoire de Juliette. The nurturing nature, moreover, evokes the Venus described by Lucrère, here embodying the virtuous path to be chosen, reversing the traditional opposition of Hercules' choice in which Venus more often embodies vice and debauchery.
Technical Data
Notice #025413
