The Vestal virgin Tuccia being inspected while carrying water in a sieve to prove her chastity. Etching by P.W. Tomkins,1798, after Sir J. Reynolds.

Tuccia, a Vestal virgin in BC 145, was accused of unchastity, but proved her innocence by miraculously carrying water in a sieve (Pliny, Natural history 28: 12)

The Vestal virgin in Reynolds's depiction was identified in the press as a portrait of Mrs Seaforth (also called Rebecca Lyne), described by Mannings, loc. cit., as the "child bride" of the wealthy East India Company official Richard Barwell (1741-1804): she was fifteen when she married Barwell who was then aged forty-seven. However, this is corrected by the Oxford DNB entry on Barwell and by Mannings on a separate portrait of the same woman and her daughter (Mannings p. 408 no. 1595). Barwell married as his second wife on 24 June 1785 Catherine (1769-1847), the daughter of Nathaniel Coffin from Boston, Massachusetts, and his wife, Elizabeth. Mrs Seaforth (Rebecca Lyne, who took the name of Seaforth) was the mistress of Barwell by whom she had three girls and a boy (Mannings p. 408 no. 1595). Fuseli saw the figure of the Vestal in this picture as anything but chaste, and deduced "The whole is an irony ... it ridicules what it pretends to celebrate" (quoted by Mannings, loc. cit.; cf. Calè loc. cit.)

London (Poets gallery, Fleet Street) : Thos. Macklin, April 3d 1798.

1 print : stipple engraving ; platemark 52.4 x 40 cm

The Vestal. Lo! in the injur'd virgin's cause, Nature suspends her rigid laws, By power supreme constrain'd, The trembling drops forget t'obey Old graviations potent sway, And rest on air sustain'd. Vide Dr Gregory's Ode to meditation. Sir J. Reynolds pinxt. P.W. Tomkins engraver to Her Majesty sc.

Verses in lettering ascribed by Mannings to the Rev. Thomas Gregory, who is not in the Oxford DNB, English short-title catalogue, British Library catalogue etc.

David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: a complete catalogue of his paintings, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 568, no. 2171

Luisa Calè, Fuseli's Milton gallery, Oxford 2006, p. 72

Wellcome Collection 536282i