Charity

Salviati's Charity (Carità) of around 1540, in the Uffizi Gallery, is among his most celebrated works and a touchstone of Florentine Mannerist allegorical painting. The Uffizi holding places it in direct dialogue with the Florentine tradition from which it emerged — Bronzino's own allegories are nearby — and makes it one of the most visible of Salviati's surviving works. The personification of Charity as a nursing mother surrounded by children had ancient origins and was revived and transformed by Italian Renaissance painters, but Salviati's version is distinguished by the figure's combination of physical monumentality with a cool, almost detached formal beauty that characterizes his best work. The Uffizi's acquisition reflects the Medici collecting practices that gathered important Florentine Mannerist works throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Oil on panel, the work shows Salviati at his most accomplished: the large central female figure is rendered with sculptural solidity derived from his study of Michelangelo and ancient sculpture, while the surrounding infants create a demanding compositional problem that he resolves through rhythmic variety. The cool, refined palette — blues, creams, soft yellows — gives the allegory a timeless, ideal quality.