View source for Tuccia

{{Short description|Ancient Roman Vestal Virgin}}
[[File:Francesco Granacci - La vestale Tuccia.jpg|thumb|500x500px|Tuccia, in a painting by Francesco Granacci]]
'''Tuccia''' (3rd-century BC<ref>Robin Lorsch Wildfang: ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=b919AgAAQBAJ&dq=vestal+virgins+licinia&pg=PA93 Rome's Vestal Virgins]''</ref>), was an ancient Roman [[Vestal Virgin]]. Its supposed by her [[Nomen gentilicium|nomen]] that she belonged to the [[Tuccia gens|Gens Tuccia]]. She is known for an incident in which her chastity was questioned by a spurious accusation. The punishment for vestal virgins who lost their chastity were if they could not prove their innocence - were to be sentenced to [[Immurement|immurment]]. In Tuccia's case, to save her reputation and life she utilized a flat perforated basket to carry water, from the [[Tiber]] to the [[Temple of Vesta]] without the water falling to the ground through the [[sieve]].
After showing she was as chaste as she said, her accuser was never heard from again.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, |publisher=Loeb |year=1937}}</ref>
Vestal virgins were thought to possess magical powers<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fowler |first=W. Warde |title=Religious Experience of the Roman People |publisher=Outlook Verlag |year=2020 |isbn=9783752316971}}</ref> by their service to Vesta and thus by performing this miracalous action Tuccia had not only proven her chastity but also that she was favored by Vesta.
This very act was associated with one of the vestal virgins' ritual duties of fetching pure water which had never come into contact with the earth. The vestals even had special vessels to carry this water which might correspond with Tuccias sieve.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lorsch Wildfang |first=Robin |title=Rome's Vestal Virgins |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2006 |isbn=9781134151660 |pages=11}}</ref>
==Sources for Tuccia==
Tuccia's proving of her innocence is recounted in the following:
:''O [[Vesta (mythology)|Vesta]], if I have always brought pure hands to your secret services, make it so now that with this sieve I shall be able to draw water from the [[Tiber River|Tiber]] and bring it to your temple'' (Vestal Virgin Tuccia in [[Valerius Maximus]] 8.1.5 absol).
:''Tuccia proved her innocence by carrying a [[sieve]] full of water from the [[Tiber]] to the [[Temple of Vesta]]'' [Augustine, De Civitate Dei, X, 16, in Worsfold, 69].
[[File:Tuccia Wellcome L0063762.jpg|thumb|'The Vestal' by [[Joshua Reynolds]], showing Tuccia.]]The Vestal Tuccia was celebrated in [[Pliny the Elder]]'s ''Natural History'' (28.3) and [[Petrarch]]'s ''Triumph of Chastity'' in ''[[Triumphs]]''. However, in [[Juvenal]]'s ''[[Satire VI]]'' (famously renamed 'Against Women') he references her as one of many lascivious women.
==Similarities to other stories from antiquity==
[[File:Leroux Louis Hector--La Vestale Tuccia--1874.jpg|thumb|[[Hector Leroux]], ''La Vestale Tuccia'', 1874.]]
The story of Tuccia shares some similarities with that of [[Quinta Claudia]], an ancient Roman matron who was accused of living an immoral life. To prove her innocence of the charges she performed a miraculous feat with the aid of the goddess Cybele.
In paintings she has often been depicted as a vestal virgin.
Aemilia, a vestal virgin who, when the [[sacred fire of Vesta]] went out on one occasion was accused by the priests of having neglected her duties to entertain men, prayed to Vesta for assistance, and miraculously rekindled it by throwing a piece of her garment upon the extinct embers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Berkowitz |first=Eric |title=Sex and Punishment |publisher=Saqi |year=2013 |isbn=9781908906014}}</ref>
==Tuccia in the arts==
The Vestal Virgin Tuccia (Italian: La Vestale Tuccia) or Veiled Woman (Italian: La Velata) is a marble sculpture created in 1743 by [[Antonio Corradini]].
==Sieve iconography==
By the late [[Middle Ages]], the image of Tuccia and her sieve had become associated with the virtue of [[chastity]]. Paintings of chaste women would often include a sieve, and this symbol figures prominently in many depictions of England's "Virgin Queen" [[Elizabeth I]] in the late sixteenth century.<ref>{{cite book |last1=ffolliott |first1=Sheila |date=2003 |chapter=Portraying Queens: the International Language of Court Portraiture in the Sixteenth Century |editor1-last=Ziegler |editor1-first=Georgianna |title=Elizabeth I: Then and Now |location=Washington DC |publisher=Folger Shakespeare Library |page=170 |isbn=029598323X }}</ref>
==Other==
There is a crater named after Tuccia on the asteroid [[4 Vesta]].
==See also==
* [[Vestal Virgin]]
* [[Exemplary Women of Antiquity]]
* [[Plimpton Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I]]
* [[Vestal Virgin Tuccia (Corradini sculpture)]]
==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{commons category|Tuccia}}
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[[Category:Vestal Virgins]]
[[Category:3rd-century BC Roman women]]
[[Category:3rd-century BC clergy]]
[[Category:Priestesses from the Roman Republic]]
[[Category:Tuccii]]