Allegory Of Charity

Painting, oil on canvas, with dimensions of 105 x 120 cm without frame and 125 x 140 with a beautiful carved frame depicting the 'allegory of charity and love with a woman with three children of the 17th-century Bolognese Master  Carlo Cignani ( 1628 - Forlì 1719 ).

The painting is in a good state of legibility and depicts an iconographic subject that takes up a very widespread and proven pattern that places the mother with the suckling child in the center of the composition near two other children, one of whom in this case is very sweetly sleeping in her cradle.

We can see the worthiness of our painting through its technical and executional characteristics; it is evident that we are faced with an interesting composition pervaded by a renewed formal essence that is in tune with the pictorial experiments in use at the time that harkens back to the painting of Carlo Cignani.

The composition is very balanced and learnedly regulated in color, of quality especially in form while the scene, represented here, intelligently developed with colors that are never excessive undoubtedly falls within the theme par excellence of the paintings of that period, that is, in the so-called Baroque painting of which the Bolognese school numbers several outstanding masters. 

This Charity is an 'emblematic work of Bolognese painting because we find in it that classical devotional character mixed with typical gestures as well as the compositional setting, the brilliance of the colors and the peculiar way of drapery that we find in other Emilian works.

In this painting we can see how both the figure of the woman and those of the children have a formal rigor and yet are painted with a nonchalant ease of execution; sharp and variegated cues emerge clearly and range from skillful luminous contrasts to the reinterpretation of tenebrism; very learned characters that make this woman enigmatic, tenebrous but of appealing beauty.

The confident tracing of the almost drawn and strongly chiaroscuro brushstrokes reveals a graphic preparation and an educated and composite pictorial conduct, with a special treat: the depiction of this landscape in the distant, magical background with a perspective play that can elaborate a love for nature from which we all come.

The paintings and works of art published here are my exclusive property and therefore are always available to be viewed, by appointment, in my exhibition sites located in Sanremo and Brescia.

This item , like all our objects, is sold accompanied by a photographic certificate FIMA of authenticity and lawful origin; this document identifies the object by adding more value to the article.
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Mr. Riccardo Moneghini
Art Historian