Charity (c. 1590): Art, History and Details

Charity (c. 1590) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Abraham Bloemaert (Dutch, 1566–1651).

The work and its context

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

Abraham Bloemaert drew on traditional depictions of the Virgin and Child for this allegorical image of Charity: a woman surrounded by children, one an infant for whom she has bared her breast. Bloemaert was one of the leading proponents of the Mannerist style in the Northern Netherlands. Characteristics of that style include exaggerated figural proportions, contorted poses, heightened colors, densely packed compositions, and a deliberate eroticism—invoked here to emphasize the magnetic quality of Charity’s serene beauty.

Object facts

• Title: Charity
• Date: c. 1590
• Creator attribution: Abraham Bloemaert (Dutch, 1566–1651)
• Culture: Netherlands, late 16th Century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 87 x 100 x 10.2 cm (34 1/4 x 39 3/8 x 4 in.); Unframed: 68.6 x 54.5 cm (27 x 21 7/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1994.10

A detail from the museum

Charity is almost always personified as a woman with children.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Jack Kilgore & Co., painting information sheet, in CMA curatorial file.
• Jack Kilgore, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 22, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.
• Jack Kilgore, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 22, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.

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.