File:Leroux--Vestal Tuccia--1874Corcoran--Detroit Publishing Co.tif

English: Louis Hector Leroux, The Vestal Tuccia, Photograph of a painting dated 1874, at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. From Catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, edition of 1881, p. 43: "The Vestal Tuccia, 4.5 ft. x 8 ft., 2.5 in. 1874. This picture carried off a second-class gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1874. The Vestal Tuccia, charged with want of chastity, stands on the brink of the Tiber with a sieve, which she raises above her head with both hands, and thus prays to Vesta: 'Oh, powerful Goddess, if I have always approached thy altar with pure hands, allow me to fill this sieve with the water of the Tiber, and carry it into thy Temple!' In fine harmony with this incident, the artist has employed purity of design and cool, chaste coloring. The shores and wharves of the Tiber are given with strict local truth. The whole interest converges upon the form of Tuccia, while distant masses of the people, a near group of Vestals, and a solitary fisher-boy in the foreground, watch her in eager expectation of the issue of the miraculous test."