Vestal Virgin Tuccia (Corradini sculpture)

The Vestal Virgin Tuccia (Italian: La Vestale Tuccia) or Veiled Woman (Italian: La Velata) is a marble sculpture created in 1743 by Antonio Corradini, a Venetian Rococo sculptor known for his illusory depictions of female allegorical figures covered with veils that reveal the fine details of the forms beneath.

The Jacobite pretender to the English throne, James Stuart, and Pope Benedict XIV both visited the studio to view the veiled Tuccia.

[3][7][10] There are three iconographic elements employed by Corradini in The Vestal Virgin Tuccia: the veil, the sieve, and the rose that she holds in her left hand.

However, Corradini's treatment serves to highlight the flesh beneath the veil, in this case, her belly and breasts, which belies the theme he is purportedly portraying.

[14] Nearly a decade later in Naples, Corradini again used the elements of the veil and roses when crafting his last work, La Pudicizia (variously translated as Modesty or Chastity).

[9] At the end of the 18th century, Innocenzo Spinazzi used Tuccia as his modello for a depiction of the Allegory of Faith commissioned for a chapel in Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi in Florence.

Engraving of a veiled Tuccia (1732) attributed to Corradini
Detail of The Vestal Virgin Tuccia highlighting the illusion of diaphanous fabric clinging to flesh