Allegory of Virtue

The jamb of the north lateral portal of the main façade of Strasbourg Cathedral is decorated on either side by the allegorical statues of the Virtues overcoming the Deadly Sins. The tympanum reliefs evoke the childhood of Christ. The Virtues are each holding a ribbon with an inscription in one hand and a lance in the other, with which they are smiting the tiny figures of the Vices, trampled underfoot. The allegory described in a poem by Prudentius, a poet of late antiquity, was already depicted in Romanesque carvings and illuminated manuscripts but it first appeared in monumental sculpture in the Gothic jamb statues of Strasbourg Cathedral. Commissioned by the museum in 1909, the cast was made in the casting workshop of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin. It was exhibited in the Romanesque Hall in 1910.