Amor Caritas (modeled 1898, cast after 1898): Art, History and Details

Amor Caritas (modeled 1898, cast after 1898) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, born Ireland, 1848–1907).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Saint-Gaudens based this angelic figure, an allegory of Love and Charity, on his longtime model and mistress, Davida Johnson Clark. The initial life-size bronze cast of the composition received much acclaim, and the artist regarded it as “one of the things I care for most that I have done.” Due to its popularity, approximately 20 smaller-scale versions, including this example, were produced by Saint-Gaudens and sold through high-end retail outlets such as Tiffany & Co. in New York.

Object facts

• Title: Amor Caritas
• Date: modeled 1898, cast after 1898
• Creator attribution: Augustus Saint-Gaudens (American, born Ireland, 1848–1907)
• Culture: America, late 19th Century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 101 x 45.2 cm (39 3/4 x 17 13/16 in.)
• Collection: American - Sculpture
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1923.726

A detail from the museum

An elementary school in Manhattan is named in Saint-Gaudens's honor.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Henry A. Everett for the Dorothy Burnham Everett Memorial Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Solender, Katherine. The American Way in Sculpture, 1890-1930. Cleveland, OH: Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1986.
• W. M. M. "Contemporary American Bronzes." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 10 (1919): 151-63.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.