Allegory of Charity

Art Institute of Chicago

Allegory of Charity

Francesco de Mura (Italian, 1696-1782)LinkedCulture matchlcp-f1484de43016

Date
c. 1743–44
Medium
Oil on canvas
Culture
Italy
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Institution
Art Institute of Chicago
Object ID
36492

From the Art Institute of Chicago record

This painting presents an allegory of the virtue of charity through images of maternal love and sacrifice: a mother nurtures several young children and a pelican feeds her young by drawing blood from her own breast. This work was one of a set of allegories of five virtues intended as decorations set above doors in a palace belonging to the king of Savoy, a region in northwest Italy. Francesco de Mura spent most of his career in Naples but also worked for the king of Savoy in the 1740s, producing paintings in a style that combined grand, calm figures with active drapery. Although it is now rectangular, the canvas shows signs of an earlier curved shape appropriate to a Rococo room decoration.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line
Preston O. Morton Memorial Fund for Older Paintings
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Charles Emmanuel III, Turin [see Pinto 1987]. Peretti, Rome, by 1971 [according to Heim Commission Book at the Getty Research Institute]; Heim Gallery, London, 1971; sold to the Art Institute, 1971.

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Object type
AAT300033618

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