Pallas and the Centaur

The life-size figures are from classical mythology and probably form an allegory. There is a centaur on the left, and a female figure holding a very elaborate halberd on the right. She is clutching the hair of the centaur, who was evidently about to shoot from his bow. The female figure was called Camilla in the earliest record of the painting, an inventory of 1499, but in an inventory of 1516 she is called Minerva, the Roman equivalent of Pallas Athene; Pallas remains her usual modern identification, but Camilla has supporters. Arthur Frothingham suggested that she is Florencia, the personification of the city of Florence. The fine cloth of her dress is decorated with the Medici's three-ring insignia.

A figure specifically originating from Roman mythology, Camilla was a princess raised in the forest by her father, the exiled King Metabus, to be dedicated to Diana as a virgin warrior huntress, for whom subduing a centaur might be considered ordinary. Pallas/Minerva, by contrast, is a major deity, representing wisdom, trade, and more. Centaurs are associated with uncontrolled passion, lust and sensuality. The painting's meaning is clearly at least in part about the submission of passion to chastity and/or reason. Various more specific personal, political and philosophical meanings along these general lines have been proposed.