This allegory was painted for the papal nephew Cardinal Francesco Barberini. As in a tableau vivant, recognizable people have taken emblematic roles: a young woman has dressed as Italy (wearing a castellated crown, holding a shield, and standing on a cornucopia); two hairy-chested men play the parts of river gods (the Arno, with a lion, and the Tiber, with the twins Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf that suckled them). In this work, Valentin pushed the practice of painting from a posed model to its extreme, creating a unique masterpiece as radical as anything by Caravaggio. Indeed, even Gustave Courbet, two centuries later, did not surpass the realism of the models-cum-river gods. The painting occupied a place of honor in the cardinal’s residence and must have provoked fascinating conversations.